Alphabet Soap
by The Qing
Summary: (Part 2 of Ventures in Viridian) Lance and Pidge play dirty tricks on one another and come clean in more ways than you'd expect as they walk down alien shores.


**Alphabet Soap**

Summary: Lance and Pidge play dirty tricks on one another and come clean in more ways than you'd expect as they walk down alien shores.

Author Note: The title will make sense. I promise.

Pidge didn't want to relax. Never really cared for it. Not that she had a problem with relaxed settings or states of mind. Those could accommodate all manner of productive output. What she took issue with was the act. Initially, she believed that she was resentful of being tired; of the limited, if renewable, supply of energy a body could contain and use before it needed to rest. But the older she got and the more people she came to know, Pidge concluded that even if mankind had been blessed with inexhaustible reservoirs of biological vitality, there would still be those that would be aloof, lazy, or bored enough to find a way to slack off in spite of their limitless vigour.

There was just so much you could be doing instead; texts you could be reading, places you could be going, discoveries you could be making. That time squandered in beds, hammocks, couches, and the like could be better spent. She believed this back when she had still been Katie, made it her credo during her investigations as Pidge, and was flabbergasted that her teammates weren't taking it as an indisputable truth now that they were all embroiled in a gargantuan cosmic conflict. Did she want everyone to live in a constant state of alarm? No. There was performing well under pressure and then there was trying to not get shot during a fire fight. A larger sense of urgency though, was that too much to ask for?

Slowing down the tempo carried with it the dangers of frivolity, getting confronted with and becoming fixated on trivial matters. For instance, given her current straits, Pidge's most immediate concern was if she would ever find it in herself to wear her Paladin uniform again. She hadn't had high hopes for its condition after keeping it on for so long, having been forced to sift through whatever was brewing beneath its surface for days, and finding out what it was when she made landfall revealed that she should have set those expectations even lower.

When she undid her belt, removed her chestplate, and peeled the suit down to her shoulders, the light weight of her armoured sleeves forced the rest of the garment to droop, slide, and ultimately collapse off of her body unassisted; lubricated as its insides were by a slick congealed film of dead skin, sweat, grease, and other substances that she really, really, really didn't want to identify. She was astounded that the rest of her flesh didn't rot off right then and there. The stench had been so unspeakably foul that she had thrown her armor inside her Lion's mouth and closed it shut so she could languish in odourless peace. Pidge hoped that the machine wouldn't be too cross with her for being made to do this, but took comfort in the fact that if their roles had been switched, she would've done the same. Under protest, but she still would've done it.

Now garbed in her spare – and only spare – set of clothes, Pidge tried not to get too comfortable. Making an effort to stave off the ideal humidity of this planet with no name, ignore the soft sand beneath her legs, and dismiss the acclimating suppleness of the curved young tree trunk she was leaning against as well as the welcome shade its wide swaying leaves provided. She needed to stay awake; keep herself busy until the clock ran out. It wouldn't be long now, just half an hour.

To her dismay, the more successful she was at steeling herself against this splendid scenery, the more acutely aware she became of how sticky she was from the neck down, how dry she felt from the neck up, and of an alarming brittleness jangling through her teeth.

The respite was not without its advantages though. It gave her a chance to tinker with her equipment. Nothing too extreme as she didn't have the tools, but she had just enough odds and ends on hand to make a proper attempt at tweaking her Lion's communication systems. Experimenting with the navigational gear hadn't revealed anything new, failing to give her even the murkiest inkling of where the Castle of Lions might have been.

Sussing out the locations of her teammates had been hard enough even with the billions of motes on Elad boosting her sensors. Finding out where the Castle was hiding while she was travelling non-stop through space bordered on the impossible. While she largely despised their uncanny ability to do so, Pidge would've given her right arm to learn how the Galra kept track of their movements. It would've been a small price to pay. She could easily replace it with one of the training bots' and Shiro seemed to manage just fine with his alien prosthetic; she'd install a computer and some weapons in hers with allowance for modular equipment and upgrades, and then it'd be better than the real thing.

Still, such information – and dismemberment - might be useless in remedying this conundrum. Hiding from the Galra was a feat the Castle had gotten away with for over several millennia. Without the Paladins causing a ruckus and with its only occupants trying their best to go undetected, if the ivory starship didn't want to be found, it probably wouldn't be. Her underequipped self detecting it was likely infeasible. Enabling the reverse? That she might have been able to do.

Allura was still connected to the Lions, however that worked, and was most assuredly on the lookout for her and the other Paladins. If Pidge couldn't find the Castle, then she could at least make it easier for the Castle to find her. Using what insights she had garnered from studying Altean technology and what little data she could decode from the intel she had recently pilfered from the Galra's facilities, she had her Lion fire out a powerful electronic signal that would ideally be obnoxiously prominent enough for the princess to 'hear,' but buried beneath enough layers of junk code that the Galra would wave it off as just another blob of radio detritus, white noise of the void beneath notice – and more importantly – suspicion.

It was a good plan, sounded impressive in concept, and was executed without a hitch. However, the transmitting of the signal was without any sort of fanfare. Apart from the smiling bespectacled icon on her screen, you'd be hard pressed to say that she had accomplished anything outside of rapidly typing on her keyboard. All she could do now was wait for a response; hoping that the signal got far enough, hoping it would reach Allura and that she'd have the means and opportunity to call back. Pidge frowned at how so much was up to chance. Centuries of human technological advancement, thousands of years worth of alien engineering backing her up, and here she was effectively throwing a bottled message into the ocean. It was a fine bottle with a well-written message, but it was still subject to the tidal whims of a temperamental sea that was even now lapping with earnest tenderness against the nearby shore.

"Aw, darn," her frown deepened. "I'd just blocked that out too."

She gingerly dug her toes into the sand, letting each granule of fragmented earth tickle their undersides and in-betweens. Her fingers began tracing algorithms and diagrams into the sand before giving up to blithely skim across the pliant ground. This wouldn't do. The mellow pendulum of the tide still swayed in her ears, threatening to overwhelm the young Paladin's eyelids and meld her into this picturesque scenery.

She gazed out at the barrier her Lion had erected, sequestering her from the majority of the planet's vegetation outside of the lone tree she had seated herself against. Light turquoise leaves, and zigzagging grooves and patterns running down the lengths of stems and trunks distinguished these plants from their tropical Terran counterparts. Pidge had studied and chosen her landing site carefully to ensure that she wouldn't be surprised by concealed mechanisms, apex predatory fauna, or a less-than-welcoming native society. If she had believed in and had the expertise to do so, she would've checked for ghosts too, just to be safe.

Likely because she had never been inside of hers before, she felt faint embers of resentment at the hexagonal outlines that marked the forcefield's curvature. Through these interlocked tiles of light, the thicker jungle beyond this coast appeared to be in a constant state of intrusion; less framed by the web of negative space than it was rooting its way through it.

This felt a little better. Suspicion. Intrigue. Unlike some people, she wasn't here on sabbatical. Or by choice. The presence of the shield also forced her to recall a not-at-all relaxing conversation she had recently had with the man who was responsible for her present predicament.

" _But there could be a way to change it, right?"_ Lance had asked. _"Maybe there's a button you haven't pressed yet or some kind of lens we could install."_

" _There might be."_ Pidge had shrugged. _"Altean tech's pretty mired with blue though. The particle barrier, the interfaces, the force cannons,"_ she had listed.

" _But your Lion glows green whenever we form Voltron, doesn't it? Why can't it make green shields or shoot emerald energy blasts?"_

Pidge, not having an answer, but not having the least bit interest in letting Lance have this point, had said. _"Where's this even coming from? The eyes of all the Lions are yellow. You want them custom tinted too?"_

" _That's fine. Voltron's got yellow eyes, so it makes sense. Putting that aside, why should my Lion be the only one whose death rays match their colour scheme? It's unfair to the rest of you, if you ask me."_

" _That shoulder plate on Blue is looking a little Red there, Lance."_

A sharp ping from her computer took her out of this recollection just as it was starting to tip in her favour.

"Huh. I guess my bottle was big enough."

At first, Pidge was hesitant to answer the Altean signal right away despite how desperately she had wanted to receive one for the last dozen or so days. Chummy as they were with one another, Allura was still a Princess, royalty. 'I ought to try and look presentable' was the sentiment holding her eager digits in check; clean her glasses, rectify her helmet hair, douse her person with every perfume and cosmetic imaginable to cover up the squalor. Fortunately, some might say cynically, an unfairly bitter portion of Pidge's psyche decided that if Allura really wanted a minty fresh Green Paladin to talk to, then she ought to have called much, much earlier.

With the quiet tap of a button, Pidge bridged the gulfs between galaxies, putting a familiar, welcome, and very tired face on her screen.

Charcoal brushstrokes curved around her eyes, errant tufts coiled into exquisite tangles from the ivory stream of her hair, and the desperation twisting her features moulded them into an impeccable portrait of compassion and concern.

Go figure, Pidge thought. Even dishevelled, Allura found a way to look elegant. The fancy blue dress probably helped.

"Pidge?! Pidge, is that you?"

"Nah," she grinned. "This is Emperor Zarkon. Give me Voltron or your rebel friends are finished."

"Thank goodness." Allura exclaimed, putting a palm across her heart. "I was afraid we had a new Green Paladin on our hands," the fingers around the palm closed around it in alarm. "Not that I ever believed that would be the case."

"It's a reasonable possibility."

"Arguably, but you must understand, that I was in no way assuming that you had died horribly-."

"I get it."

"-and that I was being hailed by someone who had found your remains-."

"Furthest thing from both our minds."

"-who, given their success at accessing the Green Lion could perhaps serve as a suitable replacement. I repeat, I neither wanted nor expected-."

"Allura." Pidge interrupted. "I'm glad you're all right."

"Me? Ah. Oh yes, yes. I'm as fine as I can be given recent events. It's heartening to see that you've survived as well."

"You look good."

"Thank you. And you look…um."

"Grody."

"Is that one of your human words?" Allura asked, curiosity shooing away her bashfulness. "It doesn't sound all too flattering."

"If there's a nicer way to describe how I look right now in Altean, I'm open to suggestions."

"Hmmm. I'm afraid none come to mind at the moment." Pidge couldn't even find it in herself to be disappointed. From what she had gleaned from the Castle's archives, the Princess would have no point of reference to describe her current state. Judging from the stored images, as far as Alteans went, you were either a supermodel or dead.

"You'll probably think of one eventually."

"I should hope so." Allura said, allowing herself a deep soothing breath before continuing. "Before I forget, I must commend you for launching such a powerful beacon for us to find. You're the only other Paladin that's managed to do so for the past month," she looked sideways and tucked an infinitesimal strand of errant hair behind her left ear. "Shiro will be delighted that you called."

"Shiro's with you?" Pidge asked, though given how mobile his signal was last she checked, she had fully expected him to make it back to the Castle first. "Is something wrong? Where is he now?"

"No. His injuries, while severe, weren't beyond treatment when we came to pick him up. As for his current whereabouts..." Pidge saw the surface of Allura's cheeks briefly dip inward. "He's...asked to be left alone in his room for the time being and that he's only to be disturbed if the rest of you were recovered. Or in danger and in need of the Black Lion's assistance."

"What-?" happened, Pidge wanted to say, but the exotic blue and pink mixture of Allura's irises trembled and pleaded to be asked anything else. "-about Coran?" she said instead. "How's he?"

"Oh! He's in the next chamber, patching up some of the Castle's wiring. I'll go fetch him so he can say-."

"PRINCESS ALLURA!" the bristled bugle of Coran's voice blared from off-screen at a staggeringly impressive volume for someone who was in a completely different room. "ARE YOU TALKING TO ONE OF THE PALADINS RIGHT NOW?!"

"Yes, Coran." Allura answered gently.

"WHICH ONE?!"

"It's Pidge. She managed to reach us all the way from the Joitn Sector."

"SPLENDID! DID YOU TELL HER ABOUT ALL THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL STRUCTURAL DAMAGE THE CASTEL SUSTAINED DURING THE ESCAPE, YET?!"

Allura winced. "No, Coran."

"OR THAT THE WORMHOLE GENERATORS WERE HEAVILY COMPROMISED AND IT WILL BE A WHILE BEFORE WE CAN USE THEM ALL WILLY-NILLY AGAIN?"

"No, Coran."

"AND THAT WHEN WE BUILD UP ENOUGH OF A CHARGE, WE'RE PROBABLY GOING TO FETCH KEITH FIRST SINCE HE'S CLOSEST?"

The princess pinched her nose with fingers she no doubt wished were clamping down on her royal advisor's mouth. "No, Coran."

"HOW ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHIRO IS RATHER CROSS WITH US RIGHT NOW?"

"No, Coran."

"WELL BE SURE TO BREAK IT TO HER GENTLY! NO SENSE IN UPSETTING THE POOR DEAR! AH! And tell her that Coran says 'hi,' please," he tapered off.

"Will do!" Allura hurriedly acknowledged before turning back to Pidge. "Coran says hi."

"And a whole lot of other things."

"He did, didn't he? Certainly saved me the trouble of telling you all that myself, but I'm not quite sure what to say next. Hrrrm. I know! The Joitn Sector! Lush greenery, cool waters, powdery beaches, and just the right percentage of mugginess. Based on these readings, you couldn't have picked a finer world to rest on. I'm almost jealous."

"We're taking a break." Pidge forced a smile. "A very short break."

"That's right. You aren't alone! My connection's not as strong as it will be once the Castle's repaired, but now that I know where you are, I can sense another Lion near yours. Who are you with?"

"Lance."

"Is that so?" A swift quake of worry flicked over Allura's brow. "In hindsight, it was silly of me to ask. It was either going to be the Blue or Yellow Paladin. He isn't giving you any trouble is he?"

* * *

"Lance, let go of my tail. NOW." Pidge ordered.

"Come on, Pidge!" Lance begged over the radio. "I know you can't see it, but I've pulled my chair back, and I'm on my knees here. Please!"

Pidge looked down at her own control console, trying to determine if such a feat were possible without relinquishing the control yokes that were keeping both their vessels in place. Lance was probably exaggerating, as always, to sway her to his side. Then again, the teen was taller than her, and he did have longer arms and legs. Neither of these facts endeared his request to Pidge. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Are you seriously going to take the weekend off while Hunk might be fighting for his life?"

"I'm not asking for a weekend or even a day!" Lance clarified. "A couple of hours. No, wait, just an hour. I swear!"

"You don't even know what's down there!"

"Oxygen! Sunshine, seas, and sand! Unless those fancy instruments of yours are malfunctioning, that's what's waiting for us down there."

Pidge had been streaming information to Lance's computers since they had started travelling together, updating him on incoming potential hazards and other miscellaneous measurements of passing and soon-to-be-passed sectors. She feared such knowledge might have been wasted on her easily sidetracked teammate, but this predicament, excruciatingly inconvenient as it was, proved he had been paying some degree of attention. "They're working fine. I should know. And the sea, again? Didn't you get enough of that on Hilm?"

"Of the ocean, but not beaches. That place was completely covered in water."

"There's no difference between the two."

"Land, Pidge! LAND!"

"We've had plenty of that in the last few days," she scoffed.

"Right, how could I forget? Planets with crust so new that you start to melt the moment you look at it. Planets with gravity so high that we'd turn into brightly colored astronaut buckets if we stuck so much as a toe outside of our Lions. Planets with atmospheres so diseased that you can actually see the poison air!"

What was he expecting all the way out here? Pidge silently fumed. A giant amusement park? In any case, such hostile conditions had been a blessing in deadly disguise. The Galra would never think that the Paladins of Voltron would be napping in such atrocious locations. "They were the best ones we could've landed on."

"No. That world right down there is the best one we can land on."

"It's too early for us to take a break, Lance. We don't need one right now."

"I know! I know, but don't you want one? Feel solid non-metallic ground beneath your feet? Take a refreshing dip off the coast?"

"I don't have a swimsuit on board."

"You can use your armor then. It's light, buoyant, and you'll get a chance to wash out some of that built-up...grossness you mentioned."

And constantly felt, she refused to vocally add. "I'll wait until we get to the Castle."

"But you can freshen up now!"

Pidge teased the handles of her cockpit, minutely jerking her Lion forward, then side-to-side, hoping to find some slack in the lock from which to free herself. But the grip of Blue's jaws was too tight to wiggle out of, and given how Lance had been completely willing to risk both of their Lions getting torn apart to bring her to a halt while they were flying at such tremendous speeds, it was rather unlikely that he'd relinquish his hold until she agreed to grant his insipid request. Short of the laughably imbecilic option of using Green's superior engines to sluggishly drag its blue counterpart the rest of the way, this left her with one remaining alternative.

"Lance. You do remember that there's a gun at the end of my tail, right? Like the one at the end of yours?"

A clumsy shuffling drifted in through her speakers. "Y-yes."

"And that you've put it in Blue's mouth?"

Lance gulped. "Aheh. Seems we've got a stalemate on our hands."

"Nope." Pidge shook her head. "No, stalemate. If you don't let go of my tail, I am going to shoot you with it. A really low power shot, not enough to rupture your Lion, but at that range-." Point blank. Was it point blank? Was there a term for a range that was even closer than point blank? Pidge mused. "-It's going to really, really hurt. And you won't have much of a mandible left to ever try this again."

"You'll totally ruin Voltron's footing!" Lance protested.

"Voltron can fly. He doesn't even need feet."

"Tsk." Lance clicked. "Hearing you say that would break Hunk's heart."

"I can just build him a new one."

"Creepy. You're pretty good at making threats."

"I'm even better at following them up."

"Easy! Easy. I believe you." Lance sighed, but not with the quiet exhalation of defeat, but rather with a decadent hum of disappointment. "I really didn't want to do this, Pidge. I tried asking nicely. I tried to sell you on the dream. But if you're going to play hard to get, I'm just going to have to play even harder."

The Blue Paladin's bravado often had this innate fragility undermining its foundations, making it so that subpar steadfast resistance or a modestly precise psychological jab could lay it flat on its back with a punchdrunk skull. This sudden turn from shameless supplication to contemptuous displeasure had no hints of frailty whatsoever. He was either that deluded or he had something up his gauntleted sleeves. Pidge prayed it was the former.

"You're in no position to do that."

"Let me ask you this," When Pidge didn't protest or blow his robot's mouth apart, Lance continued. "It's been a few days. How much water have you used up since then?"

"25 fluid ounces," she answered hastily, seeing no harm in such a sensible inquiry of their rations. "You?"

His response was uncharacteristically exact. "None."

"That's impossible." Pidge dismissed. "If that were true, you'd sound a lot more-."

"Dry?"

"-dead! You couldn't possibly have gone this long without a drink of water."

"Oh, you misunderstood me, Pidge. I asked how much water you've used up. In my case, that's a net zero. In terms of how much I've USED? Several gallons."

"GALLONS?!"

"Give or take."

"How could you be so wasteful?!" she demanded, trying to calculate how much this recklessness would cost their odds of survival and how much water she had to spare in case his all ready severely depleted supplies ran out.

"Wrong question, but, eh, it helped that we stopped by that one moon in the Bault sector to take a breather. The fluids I had Blue swallow there put me in the black for a while."

"Bault?" Pidge thought back to that lonely shattered satellite. "Lance, the water there was extremely toxic. Get that stuff out of your Lion this instant!"

"Too late for that, most of it went down my gullet yesterday."

Pidge couldn't decide if this revolted or astonished her. "Drinking that should've killed you. How did it not kill you?"

"Aha! The right question. The answer? Blue's got a built-in water purifier."

"The Blue Lion has a water purifier?"

"It does indeed. A really useful appliance when you're living with a bunch of aliens who never felt the need to make or drink fresh water of any kind because, hey, they're a salt water people that got by in science, art, and fashion without unseasoned H2O. How do you think I managed to stay so clean?"

"L-Licking yourself?"

"Pidge, I might be delicious in more ways than one, but I wouldn't do that to get the sea salt crust off of me." Lance said. "Hang on. Is that how you've been trying to keep clean?"

"No!" Pidge recoiled. "It's just the first thing that came to mind."

"Me licking myself?"

Pidge could just see that punchable smirk on the other end of the comms. "It's how lots of animals groom themselves! Like lemurs and cats!"

"I'm not a cat, dude. I just ride around in a giant robot shaped like one."

"I-s-so the water they gave us...was made by you?"

"Every single drop."

"And you discovered this-." Pidge paused, still reeling from how her careful measured portioning contrasted so drastically with his inconsequential excess. "-how?"

"Dumb luck," Lance confessed. "I was dying of thirst. I had done everything I could to wring out fresh water from my surroundings without slowing down enough for the giant monster to catch up and kill me. Nothing worked. Then I got this idea. It might have been space magic. It could also have been a hallucination, but I had this idea, that the one thing I hadn't tried to filter the briny gunk through, was my Lion. There was a little more to that thought; 'Blue's got ice powers, maybe it has other water powers too.' Thinking about it now, it was a little bit of a long shot, but at the time, I just didn't have the energy to care."

"I'm assuming you still had enough to surface before you tried that."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "IfloodedtheLionwhilewewerebothunderwater."

"What the heck, Lance? The pressure could've killed you!"

"Yup." Lance said, making the 'p' pop. "I probably should have done like you said, but you know, dying. Water surged in so fast that it was up to my neck before I was able to shut down the flow. On the upside, some of it got into my mouth and by golly, it was delicious. Perfect. Pure. I almost drank my way out of there. Did some laps. Freestyle, backstroke, you name it. I let it all wash over me. Over all of me. It felt like it was cleaning me inside and out."

A year ago, before Pidge became Pidge, she would have marvelled at the very concept of this technology, how its efficiency and instantaneous processes dwarfed the capabilities of current filtration systems. She would brainstorm all the potential applications, how it could vastly improve societal infrastructure and revolutionize human interstellar travel as well as off-world colonization. The Pidge of right there and then was too busy trying to ignore how dry her throat was to do any of that.

"G-g-good for you, Lance."

"It is good for me, Pidge. So, so very good. You see, Blue and I have this tidy racket going on. Used and dirty water goes down its drains, it gets scrubbed and spruced up, and through this handy little nozzle the craftsmen of Hilm installed for me, I can use that water all over again. However I like. Washing, bathing, drinking, moisturizing...sharing."

Pidge's eardrums clung to that word needily, assuring the rest of her body that it hadn't been misheard. "Where are you going with this?"

"That planet, preferably. It looks like a nice place to do a little laundry, take a quick dip, and practice basic cleanliness. That last bit's not such a big deal for me; I've averaged two showers a day since beating the Defilon. But it could be very PLEASANT for someone who hasn't had many chances to rinse her hair, scrub her skin, or gargle those cavities away. Especially if she suddenly got a hold of a few extra jugs of water. As many as she'd need so she wouldn't look and feel so grody."

A moist itch, long thought smothered by discipline, began to stir in the unseen quagmire of Pidge's suit. "Are you...are you keeping my hygiene hostage?"

"Hehe. Ohhh, I don't think I'd ever do that," he claimed. "Though, I guess it all depends on you."

The itch slithered down her sides and tentatively brushed against her calves. "Me?"

"Say 'no' and I'll let go of Green and we'll be on our way. What's mine stays mine and what's yours stays yours." Lance explained. "Say 'yes,' we hit the beach for an hour and then we'll keep going, but not before you get something invigorating for your trouble; and more of the same whenever you'd like."

"Lance," Pidge panted, the itch was now gnawing at her soles. "C-come on. D-don't do this to your teammate, y-your buddy, your pal! Remember all the good times we had back on Earth? And-and as Paladins?"

"I do remember," Lance replied. "And I think we could have even more good times down there. What do you say?"

"Y-you-YOU-!" Blackmailer! Cad! Con! Sicko! Tyrant! Sadist! Were some of the less colourful insults Pidge wanted to 'say.' Her urge to scream all of it at once caused the itch to mutate and expand, wrapping around her thighs and drilling into her palms.

And she might have done it, unleashed every expletive she had ever learned from over a dozen years of oratory experience; she was prepared to entomb Lance and his cruel offer beneath a verbal mudslide of spontaneous vitriol and undeniable refusal.

She was about to, but she was waylaid by the seductive sloshing of something being poured.

"Don't mind me." Lance assured. "All this haggling just got me a bit parched. So I poured myself a drink. Didn't have any cups onboard, so I'm just using my helmet." Pidge heard him take a long and awfully exaggerated slurp. "Mm-mm! Gets the job done though. Ain't technology grand?"

"N-." Pidge began. If the foul mouthed filibuster was out, she could still say this.

"Take your time. I can wait."

"N-n-!" She needed to say it. Sternly. Quickly. N-O. Chop it out of her neck if she had to.

"Just to clarify, I'd never let you die of dehydration, Pidge. If you were to say, lose or perhaps squander the water you had, I'd have your back. Even if you did say 'no,' I'd give you just enough water every day to wet your whistle...but not much else."

"N-n-n-!" Pidge was never one to let herself be bullied or intimidated. Not by the kids that picked on Matt when they were in kindergarten, not by the cadets and head officers of Galaxy Garrison, not by the Galra Empire's armadas, and she most certainly wasn't going to be coerced by this vain, callow yutz. It didn't matter that the beach world she hadn't spared a second glance to before now dangled hypnotically with promise. The clawing sloppiness that made her feel like she was being digested was inconsequential. Katie Holt was stronger than that. She was going to stand her ground. For the sake of the universe. For the sake of her dignity! Her prickly, slimy, filthy dignity! She would not give in!

There was a splash and a falsetto yelp of alarm.

"Oh no! I spilt it." Lance shrieked disingenuously. "It's-it's all over everything! My armour, my face, and, aw, it's running down my waterproof controls! The more I try to wipe it, the more it spreads. My spotless boots are just sliding all over the super slippery floor."

The sharp and soft pattering of his movements forced Pidge to recall afternoons spent stomping through puddles of rain, the gurgling of Jacuzzi jets, and spoons innocently churning the porcelain depths of teacups.

"I feel so lubricated right now! Ah well," More pouring, more sloshing. "There's plenty more where that came from."

Pidge tried to inject her response with whatever dwindling force and will she had left. "That water you're drinking is probably full of your dandruff!"

"My dear girl." Lance chortled. "What is this DANDRUFF you speak of?"

* * *

"No, Allura." Pidge glumly fibbed. "He's been an absolute delight."

"I'm pleased to hear that." Allura must have been exhausted. She was usually much more astute when it came to detecting sarcasm. "I was just worried he might have been making unwanted advances towards you."

"Unwanted advances?" Pidge asked, unfamiliar with the phrase.

"Well, you are a young lady of considerable charm and as you might have noticed via his ceaseless flirtations, Lance fancies himself as something of a philanderer. I feared he would try to court you as well."

Flirtations. Ceaseless. Court. Lance. Now what she had said earlier made sense. "He...that...no. No, that hasn't happened."

"Wonderful." Allura cheered. "If he hasn't all ready, I doubt he'll ever try!"

"Yeah," said Pidge, conflicted as to whether she was more comforted or insulted by that likelihood. "It's probably for the best."

"Undoubtedly." Allura nodded with a smile too wide to be assuring or genuine. "But given that you aren't in any physical or mental distress at the moment, I have something of a quandary that we might possibly discuss."

"Need help finding solutions?"

"Quite the opposite, actually. I'm burdened with an excess of those." Allura said. "Pidge, about earlier, when Coran mentioned the wormhole generator. Its ability to store and manage Quintessence is rather frayed at the moment; energy is sapped at an exponential rate with every use. What once required a few minutes of my concentration now takes days. And the longer the distance travelled, the longer it takes to recharge again depending on our next destination."

"Hunk and I will do what we can to help you guys fix it when we get back." Pidge said.

"I'm sure that you'll be up to the task." Allura beamed. "So with that in mind, who among the remaining lost Paladins should the Castle retrieve first?"

"Weren't you all set to fetch Keith?"

"Yes, that was the plan, but that was before I knew where you and Lance were. I don't want you two thinking that I've decided to leave you in a lurch heading to...where are you heading, exactly?"

"Hunk's location." Pidge shrugged. "His general location anyway. He's on the move, but he's flying blind, so he's been ricocheting around this trio of quadrants. Sending you the coordinates now," she explained with a click and a tap.

"Have you attempted to contact him yet?" Allura asked as she looked over the data.

"I've tried, but he hasn't answered. He might not be able to or he might not have gotten the transmission at all. Something could be wrong with his Lion."

"At least it can still fly. But with where it is now, does that really-?" she stroked her chin in thought. "Hm."

"Allura?"

"If I get you and Lance first, we'll have more Paladins to counter whatever comes our way," she mumbled, more to herself than Pidge.

"Keith's closer though."

"He is, and it would take considerably more energy to reach you or Hunk." Allura acknowledged. "But even one of you helping Coran could bring the Castle back up to snuff, making future warps faster and easier. Should I go for the numerical advantage or aid those that might be in need of immediate intervention? What do you think, Pidge?"

It would've been so terribly easy to scream, 'Pick me! Pick me!' but she looked at her surroundings: this placid vista that did not scream, 'in dire need of rescue.'

The Green Paladin groaned. "How much more charging would it take to get to us?"

"A week."

"And Hunk?"

"8 days."

"What about Keith?"

"Just 5. Four and a half if we're lucky."

Pidge scratched the back of her oily scalp in defeat. "You should go for Keith, then," she said. "By my calculations, we'll be meeting up with Hunk in 3."

"Are you sure?"

"On both counts." Pidge answered. "It's the most sensible option we can take."

Allura nodded. "I can't find any fault in that. The sooner we get Voltron and its Paladins back into the fray, the better."

"Then that settles just about everything, doesn't it?" Pidge asked, her mind all ready whirring with schedules and star chart routes.

"Not quite." Allura said. "Pidge, there's something I need to tell you. Words that I'd like you to share with Lance and Hunk once you retrieve him."

"Do you need me to record you or write them down?"

"That won't be necessary." Allura shook her head. "Regrettably, I've little to say."

Pidge watched one of her hands rub its opposite wrist before sliding up her elbow, deforming the pristine fabric. How could hands capable of tearing through steel look so fragile? "When you return to the Castle, there are a number of truths I will have to reveal to you. Knowledge I thought better unmentioned until I saw fit, but should have shared immediately. Once you learn of this information, the way you look at me might change," she warned. "You might not trust me as much. You might find it hard to believe anything I say. But I need you to believe this!"

Her tone was forlorn and contrite, and it all began to make sense to Pidge. The fatigue, her clumsy assurances, her eagerness to please; this was what had been waiting at their core. "I am truly grateful that you all came to rescue me."

A glassy sheen veiled her eyes and Pidge was reminded again of Shiro's anger as well as the mystery of what might have caused him to resent the Altean Princess and possibly reject these words of gratitude. "Allura, it's fine. You don't have to-."

"Pidge, please let me finish before I lose my nerve." Allura begged. "I thought it was all over for me. That my life was forfeit and that I'd be joining my parents before the day was done. That it would fall to others to overthrow Zarkon and liberate the universe," she smiled. It was subdued and graceful. "I didn't think rescue was possible. I knew the risks were tremendous and that the most pragmatic course of action would have been to leave me to my fate...but a part of me hoped you'd try. And then, against all odds and logic and common sense, you, Shiro, Keith, Lance, Hunk and Coran charged into the heart of the Galra Empire to save my life. I was horrified at your audacity, then astounded that we managed to escape. I am so sorry that I doubted you."

A phantom knot pinched its way into being within Pidge's gut. "What can I say?" she began in spite of the knot, believing that a 'You're Welcome' or a 'No need to thank us' would've been a drab way to reply to such resplendent gratitude. "We can't help being great."

Allura giggled, the moisture in her gaze twinkling happily. "Careful. I think Lance is beginning to rub off on you."

The spectacled young woman felt her ears redden. "He-He is not!"

"A jest. I jest," said Allura. "Though you must admit, that was something he might say."

"I suppose." Pidge grumbled, frazzled but largely glad that her choice in words had succeeded in lifting Allura's spirits. Albeit in a fashion she hadn't expected or desired.

"Regardless, I'm relieved that the two of you are safe. And from what I have witnessed, I have full confidence that you'll overcome any obstacles left in your path." Allura said. "Until we meet again. Farewell, Pidge."

"TTFN."

"Tea-tea-eff-end?"

"That's 'Tah-Tah-For-Now' in Earthling."

"Really?" the Princess grinned at the discovery. "How delightful!"

It was a good place as any to end their call, with Allura's face merry and her morale high, so that's what Pidge did.

An alarm pinged to life on her screen. Lance's sixty-minute sabbatical had ended. She closed her computer and let it rest on the trunk of the tree. Pidge then made her way to the edge of the forcefield, paused to marvel at how a ward so mighty didn't even look as thick as a sheet of cellophane, and then stepped through to the other side.

* * *

This didn't feel right.

Some part of this picture felt like it had been tipped subtly, but undeniably askew.

As Pidge walked down the ivory beach and tried to determine exactly what was amiss, her wonderings veered opposite of her steps to that spotless driveway leading into the Galaxy Garrison HQ.

Two days into her enrolment, she was ready to cut her losses and retreat back into the warm clueless shell of her old life. Katie Holt might never find out what really happened to her father, brother, and that promising Japanese astronaut they spoke so highly of, but at least she wouldn't be arrested for attempted espionage and jailed for treason. Her mission had hit a couple of snags; practically three thanks to the second one.

Security was tighter than it had ever been. The guard teams seemed to trust tourists and reporters more than the facility's pupils. She could walk the halls, walk the grounds, but the restricted wings were heavily protected against physical infiltration and there were new defensive protocols bolstering their digital networks. When she finally found a way to hack through them much later, she was flabbergasted at the sheer lack of information about the Kerberos Mission, believing that there was some hidden closed server or clandestine filing cabinet containing the real story behind the incident. Looking back, that might have been the actual extent of what they knew.

Then there were her squadmates. Lance was the obvious complication. Boastful, Egotistical, and Flamboyant Lance. With his thin eyebrows, wiry limbs, and pointed features, he was a like a walking-talking living antennae of a man, ceaselessly broadcasting his presence to the outside world; sending unsolicited signals via declarations and gesticulations to call attention to himself and his 'crew' when Pidge would have liked nothing better than to stave off as much of that as possible from herself. Above all else, for someone so self-absorbed, he was incredibly nosy, constantly trying to learn more about Pidge Gunderson, a boy that, like the Kerberos Mission files, didn't technically exist.

He'd talk about his family and ask about hers. He'd tell a funny or embarrassing story and ask if she had any of her own to share. Do you have a favourite snack? Where are you from? What's your favourite color?

Pidge Gunderson didn't have a favourite color. He had a function and Lance constantly got in the way of that function.

Hunk was quieter, but just as bad. Pidge mistook him for a meek mechanic, an otherwise intelligent pupil burdened with Lance's witless company. Within 36 hours of knowing him, she came to the conclusion that they deserved one another. His complaints and whimpering, Pidge could have handled, but ever so often, she'd catch him mumbling darkly to himself of injustices committed towards him. Hunk was also under the delusion that he was careful; a sensitive foil to his hotshot pilot pal. In truth, he just had a different set of triggers. When he was intrigued, he got the urge to meddle. With Lance's hairdryer, with their CO's antique heirloom pocket watch, with the barracks fire alarm. And because he had never genuinely practiced self control in his life, he usually gave in. Frequently without asking first.

Hunk, like Lance, said and did what he wanted, tried not to let others know that was the case; and often got in trouble due to not being very good at hiding this flaw of his. Lance, ever magnanimous and oblivious, would argue for Hunk's innocence; but because that – like Pidge Gunderson and the Kerberos Mission files – didn't exist, he'd wind up in trouble too.

Maybe that's why they had been brought together; to compensate for each other's shortcomings. Get Hunk's feet of clay moving by cooping him up with the lad who could barely stand still; marrying Lance's recklessness with a screeching conscience too physically large to ignore. Perhaps it was just a tidy way for Galaxy Garrison to keep them around; the pilot too skilled to dismiss and the engineer too brilliant to let leave while keeping them out of the way. Whatever the intent behind their grouping was, the consequences were spelt clear in denim blue and long-sleeve yellow. Someday, somehow, these two bozos were going to get her caught.

One afternoon, when she was seriously considering giving up, Lance dropkicked Mack Chakker for making fun of Hunk's weight. This frightened Pidge. Not because of Chakker's two broken ribs or the ensuing brawl that followed, but because she had been unable to make herself scarce before the Colonel arrived.

Lance got the worst of it. A full dressing down in front of his peers. Harangued on his character, on his dandy appearance, on his test scores, and most of all, on his juvenile notions of teamwork. His fighting ability was uncommented upon as the Colonel would have had to admit that when he came in, Lance appeared to have been winning. He and his 'cohorts' would be relegated to latrine duty on their off-hours for as long as it took Mack Chakker's ribs to heal. Which, even bolstered by decades of unparalleled medical advancement, would still take a long while.

Hunk, who was dragged back into the room after the Colonel saw him try to shimmy away from the melee, was next. The Colonel had owned the antique watch he had 'borrowed' and vivisected without permission. Hunk had gotten its gears turning again; an impressive deed as they hadn't moved since the Colonel had been a Cadet himself. Sadly, the timepiece was a very fragile artifact, and when he put it back together, Hunk accidentally snapped the minute hand in half. This was one of the few infractions he was able to get away with. The Colonel knew he had done it – the teen's record made him the likeliest suspect - but he couldn't prove he was responsible for the tampering. So when he caught the young engineer trying to flee, he walked up to Hunk, positioned himself five inches closer than he had with Lance, and told him, "They used to shoot soldiers for cowardice, you know?" And Hunk would never forget it.

Pidge tried to look tough, antipathic to the situation, but not spaced out. She was also terrified. The Colonel would look at her, closely, and he'd see how this 'boy' didn't have an Adam's Apple and how he eerily resembled that Katie Holt girl who was forbidden from entering the premises. He'd see past her disguise – Why? Why didn't she spring for that wig, those black contacts, or that denture set she hated the taste of?! – and he'd straighten up, peer down at her, and say, "Cadet Gunderson...as you were."

Astounded, Pidge needed a few moments for her own mental clockwork to tabulate an explanation. She was still going to be punished thanks to Lance, but that impractical and excessive dropkick of his had taken up the lion's share of the attention. It was just like how she had been so preoccupied with his badgering inquiries that Hunk came off as a sensible innocent instead of the invasive busybody that he was.

She could use this.

And so Pidge did. She was as cheerless and severe as she ever was. However, she made sure to be around Lance and Hunk often enough that she'd get painlessly entangled in their capers. The screw-ups stacked up and a general image of her character formed in the minds of her fellow cadets. Pidge Gunderson was a late entry into the program. Headstrong, choleric, but dependable. It was tragic how he was a constant victim of collateral damage due to the company he was forced to keep. He'd flourish once he was free of them. Probably snag a middling, stable technician position if he kept his nose clean. Her forged documents weren't spotty, she was just simple. That's how everyone thought of him, and she liked it that way.

Hiding in the blaze of Lance's personal spotlight was easier than she could have ever imagined. The guy did most of the work for her. His flashiness concealed her in the shadows it casted, his misdeeds distracted from her far more severe transgressions, and most beneficial of all, he was loud. Loud to his very core in voice and action. He was so loud that he brought out the loudness in others. Bemused befuddlement out of the otherwise professional Shiro. Sullen snark out of the usually taciturn Keith. Exasperation unbecoming of a future queen out of Allura. Only Coran was unaffected, though Pidge suspected that it had more to do with kinship than outright immunity.

This begged the question, the blemish she had spotted but hadn't understood until now, if someone as bombastic as Lance was on this beach, then why was it so quiet?

Pidge didn't believe for a moment that he had packed up early. He wouldn't have been in any rush to leave. His exuberant whoops and hollers as he played in the sand and jumped into the water clad in only his trunks rang audibly even from the great distance that separated their Lions. The last she had seen of him, his vague far-off outline had raised a hand in her direction then curled it back repeatedly, beckoning her to join him. She didn't.

She kept her ears at the ready, listening for any telltale cheers or screams.

But it was her eyes that found him first.

A little ways ahead, about 20 yards into the water, she could see a plate of light brown muscled flesh peeking out from the surface. That explained the silence; Lance just had his head underwater. No doubt trying to get a good look at what lay beneath in spite of how – to her knowledge – he didn't have any goggles with him.

"Lance!" Pidge called out. "Your hour's up! We gotta go!"

Lance's back didn't stir. She must have been too far or quiet to be heard past the water.

"Lance!" she yelled as she neared. "Come on, we've wasted enough time all ready!"

Again, Lance did not respond. He wasn't really moving either. He was just there, bobbing with the tide.

Pidge began to take stock of the seconds that had passed between her noting Lance's apparent absence and actually spotting him. 2 minutes, coming on 3. And she hadn't seen him come up for air yet.

"Lance?"

Humans are capable of holding their breaths for a considerable amount of time, she told herself as she quickened her pace.

"Lance!"

If she wasn't mistaken, the record for doing so currently stood at 31 minutes and 38 seconds, she recalled as she broke into a run.

Lance was fit and in good physical health. It stood to reason that his well-trained and developed physique could conceivably allow him to hold his breath longer than the national average. Maybe all the way up to 4 minutes, 5, or more.

"LANCE!"

Provided of course, his lungs were still working.

"Lance! Hold on! I'm coming!" Pidge screamed as she arrived on the stretch of wet sand that lay just across from the inert Blue Paladin, leaving nothing between them except 20 yards of a liquid alien ecosystem. The young girl dashed into the water, not bothering to shed her clothes. Doing so would waste precious seconds and the extra layers of fabric might protect her from whatever had incapacitated Lance.

19 yards.

As she slogged through the surf, she tried not to think about what that might be. Nothing big, there were no signs of struggle, Lance looked otherwise pristine. Something small, then. Something venomous.

17 yards.

The oceans back on Earth were teeming with such dangers - box jellyfishes, blue-ring octopi, sea snakes, pufferfish, cone snails – why would the seas of this planet be any different?

15 yards.

Muscle paralysis, heart failure, and extreme pain were likely ravaging his body. And she didn't have any anti-toxins on hand to fix it.

14 yards.

Probably wouldn't do them any good if she did, given how she didn't know the exact composition of the chemical cocktail that was running through his every vein and artery.

13 yards.

She couldn't think that way. First, she needed to get him back on land and pump the water out of his lungs.

11 yards.

If they could still work.

10 yards.

If he was still alive.

9 yards.

The water was mercifully shallow, but it was pulling at her clothes; weighing her down and holding her back, forcing her into an ungainly hybrid of running, swimming and crawling. Droplets ran down her spectacles and clung to their lenses, obscuring her vision.

7 yards.

Her shoes were like buoyant strips of lead lashed onto her feet. They took forever to press themselves down on the bottom and an eternity to lift out.

5.

He couldn't be dead. Not like this. Not after all they had gone through.

4.

She should've been watching out for him. It was a laughable idea, a small girl like her playing life guard to such an elongated musclehead, but they were a team.

3.

How was she going to break the news to the other Paladins?

2.

What was she going to say to his family?

1.

This was it. She was half-submerged, but she could still touch the sand with her feet. She'd turn him over like they had been taught back on Earth and drag him to shore.

The moment Pidge's fingers grazed its sides, Lance's poisoned suffocated corpse sprang up and turned in her direction with a smooth, shadowed emptiness where his face should have been.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" the cadaver screamed in a distorted and unnatural pitch as it clawed at its former friend.

"AUGH!" she squealed, scrambling away from the hands of the tanned draugr.

The ghoul roared and advanced towards her, faster and smoother than Pidge could retreat, unencumbered by garments or sneakers. The girl tripped, falling backwards onto her rear; a soft landing, but one that made her vulnerable. She could only look in terror as her pursuer stopped in front of its downed prey, looming over her, ready to rip and pounce.

Then it laughed. "Ahahahahahaha! Aw, I knew I'd get you in the water somehow!" it said, slapping its knee with one hand before pointing it at her.

Finding that she hadn't been eaten or torn to shreds, the confounded Paladin shakily got back on her feet.

"Took you long enough," he chastised. "I was counting on you to be punctual, Pidge. What was the hold up?" he asked as a chuckle shook his frame. With his head no longer blocking it, the sun brought into focus a white M-shaped outline running along the edge of a transparent blue screen; revealing that Lance's face hadn't been morbidly removed, but rather, completely helmeted. "Aheheh, for a moment, I was afraid that all I was going to get out of this was a pair of sunburnt shoulders, but that look on your face when – that look! – Haha! So worth the risk! Hahahahah-!"

Lance might have laughed a little less if he had paid attention to how Pidge looked now. At how her brow, which had been wrinkled with worry as she approached him and was thrown up in alarm when he 'attacked,' was now creased with acrimonious concentration.

Legs?

Everything from the upper-thigh down was buffered by water.

Chest?

Distant and padded with muscle.

Arms?

Too small and quick.

Face? Good lord, please, the Face? Or at least the Chin?

Her clothes were waterlogged and she'd never make the jump. Besides, it was totally encased by his helmet, making full use of its speakers and breathing apparatus to pump out grainy squeals of laughter.

Between the H and A of Lance's fifth 'Ha,' Pidge had made her choice, curled her fingers into a ball, and punched him fast and hard in the solar plexus.

The blow knocked the air out of Lance's lungs, sending him flailing and wheezing into the sea. He kicked and splashed and thrashed, trying to process the blunt pain on his gut and how his face felt so dry when he could see water above him and why it wasn't getting into his mouth. When he remembered that he was wearing his helmet and that he wasn't in danger of drowning for real, he surfaced and saw Pidge pulling herself back onto the beach.

"Hey!" he coughed. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I'm GOING to get that bath water you promised me!"

* * *

Unbelievable, Pidge thought at first, but decided that this prank hadn't even been that. Unbelievable implied that this was unexpected, that such a set-up was impossible or unlikely, but with Lance? Typical. This was so typical of him.

She marched her way along the beach towards the Blue Lion. A miniature dune was smashed into a crater as she stomped through it – she imagined it was one of his ankles – spraying sand on her moist calves and the hem of her shorts. The sand, she reluctantly observed, was as powdery as Allura claimed. It was the colour of ivory cream and it was so white and fine that a childish part of her thought that if you swirled it into a glass of water and drank the mixture, it would taste like milk.

Mom would have loved it here, Pidge mused. While Mrs. Holt was agreeable with the neuroses of her family members most of the time, she was an immovable outlier when it came to holidays; Always relishing an opportunity to drag her 'three favourite nerds' away from their papers and computer screens so that they could be immolated by the big nuclear hydrogen cloud in the sky.

" _How are the three of you going to be astronauts when you can't even handle one little yellow star?"_

" _Up there we'll have protective suits and radiation shielding!"_ she, Matt, or her dad would whine. _"And we won't have to worry about people stealing our stuff while we're getting our eyes stung by saltwater."_

" _Think of it as practice then!"_ she'd offer. _"Roughing it somewhere new and exotic outside your comfort zone."_

Then she'd give the cheek of the neediest complainer a little poke, causing all their apprehension to inexplicably leak out. It was a warm and gentle gesture, more feathery press than jab. Miffed as she was, she could almost feel it now. Except this was more rapid, like a tap, and instead of a well-trimmed nail and warm rounded finger, it felt more like something jagged and cold was doing the deed. The second tap sent her gaze leftwards, dispelling the illusion and reminding her that her mother was lightyears away. In contrast, Lance had somehow gotten right next to her in very short order.

"You dropped this," he said with his head bare and his right hand offering a pair of rounded spectacles for her to take.

Pidge thought it was another trick, but heedless of her scepticism, her fingers brushed against the bridge of her nose. Apart from flesh, there was nothing there."Wh-when did I-?"

"They probably fell off when you socked me in the stomach," he replied. "And may I say, that was one potent right cross you nailed me with."

Pidge snatched her glasses out of his hand, wary of his nimble extremities pulling them away or dangling them above her. "This doesn't make us even," she stressed as she put them on.

"I didn't say that it d-."

"Because what you did back there? You went too far, man. What is with you and making me think that you're dead?!"

"Hey, that first time wasn't intentional." Lance said. "And this was just an innocent prank."

"Lance, we are at war! Mortality is hardly the appropriate topic to be making jokes about." Pidge said. "Were you expecting me to laugh at that punchline?"

"Says the one who did most of the punching."

"Want another?"

"Fine. Fine. I get it. It was in bad taste," he brought up his hand in a five-point ward of surrender and protection. "Though you can't deny that it was pretty clever."

Unbelievable. No, Typical. "It was wasteful," she spat, motioning to the helmet tucked under his left arm. "This is years beyond anything we're making on Earth – the size, the efficiency, the hardiness – and you used it to punk me."

"Don't be mad just because you didn't see through my little ruse," Lance chided.

"I can't see through walls. That doesn't make them clever, just thick." Pidge replied, ticked at how Lance was trying to fish for compliments. She wouldn't have forgiven him right away if he had made a conventional apology and had left it at that, but his pride in exploiting her concern for his well-being was inching him closer to the realm of the irredeemable. It was also rather suspect. "And...hold on. Was this why you wanted to come down here? Just to fool me into trying to rescue you?"

"Nah, I didn't plan that far ahead." Lance confessed. "My hour was almost over, I knew you'd come out of your little bubble to tell me when it was, and I remembered this joke I've been meaning to play on someone ever since I found out that our helmets let us breathe pretty much anywhere. Figure I'd try it out on you first."

"Wow. What an honour." Pidge deadpanned. "If you're done being clever, can we please go get that water you promised me? Or was that a lie, too?"

"It's real and there's a lot of it. You'll get what's coming to you, Pidge."

"Good," she nodded.

They began walking side-by-side, the sound of their footsteps puncturing the natural ambience of the wind and the waves. The journey to the Blue Lion ought to have been a straightforward process; a uniform line free of hazards. Except Pidge felt like she was doing a majority of the walking. Lance's strides had always been lengthy, requiring her to take two steps to each one of his. Now, to keep pace, she needed to take three and with much more exertion than usual while he was barely making an effort to move forward.

As Pidge examined her companion to suss out the source of this disparity, she felt a pang of envy at how the rays of the alien sun appeared to reflect off of his bare caramel torso instead of burning it like they were doing to her neck and face. Ever the show-off, his body glistened as it dried, and his dark brown locks were back to their stylised tousled muss. He looked right at home out here and...more elevated.

"Why are you taller?"

Lance blinked, his serene disposition crumpling in concentration as he tried to formulate a reply that wouldn't make Pidge even more miffed than she currently was. "Genetics, 8-9 hours of sleep each night, and maybe you drink too much coffee," he listed.

"I mean, at present. You seem taller than usual."

"I don't feel any taller. Maybe you just got shorter."

Pidge scowled. She was on the cusp of telling him that that was as impossible as coffee stunting her growth when she looked down in spite of herself. The sand was up to the throat of her shoes, robbing her of three full inches of height. While the part of the beach she had been walking on was at a higher angle than Lance's, the ground here was much dryer and looser whereas Lance's was more moist and packed together.

That explains why walking was such a chore. Pidge tacitly fumed. She grabbed Lance by the arm – he didn't fight it - and pulled him to her side of the beach, his weight causing his bronze toes to sink into the sand. "You stay here," she ordered as she positioned herself where he had been a moment earlier. Then she took off her shoes, which were caked and heavy with counterfeit dairy dust, and shoved them into his chest. "And take these."

"They're not my size though." Lance teased as he deposited Pidge's shoes into his helmet.

"Seriously?"

"What?" he asked, brushing his pectorals clean. "I'm being resourceful."

"That's like using a telescope as a backscratcher or a fusion core as a paperweight."

"It keeps the sand off of my fingers." Lance said. "From a certain point of view, I'm still using it as intended; Protecting myself from the harsher elements."

Pidge rolled her eyes. "That's one way of looking at it, I guess."

They resumed their stroll. The Green Paladin relished the coolness of her new turf and how much easier it was to walk on it. The burdensome terrain of the Blue Paladin failed to slow him down in the slightest. Progress was mutual, if sluggish for Pidge's tastes.

"Eugh. This is taking forever," she complained.

"Hey, you're the one that parked her Lion a mile away from mine." Lance pointed out. "Why'd you do that anyway?"

"Supposedly, I came to this planet to get the first proper bath I've had in a long, long time." Pidge explained. "So I had privacy on the brain while I was choosing a place to land."

"Pfft. Privacy. I think the two of us are way past that point in our relationship, Pidge. After all…" he lifted his chin at her. An impish smirk was dancing along his lips, vexing Pidge as to what confidential aspects of herself that he might have been privy to without her knowledge. "I've seen your earwax. That's as intimate as it gets."

"Aw, gross!" she cried. "That is a horrifying metric for measuring intimacy!"

"Have you seen your brother's used q-tips?"

"Yes."

"Have you seen Shiro's?"

"No."

"Who are you closer to?"

"Overall? Matt. Obviously"

"And there you have it."

"That's a flimsy and false association."

"Is it? Would you clean your ears in front of just anybody? In public?"

"If…I was in a hurry…maybe."

Lance cringed. "Really?"

"No. No. Not really. No." Pidge quickly answered. "That would be rude and unhygienic."

"Ah, but it's a different story when you're with people you're comfortable with showing that side of yourself to. When you're around people you trust."

"Present company excluded."

"Ouch. Way to stick it to your old roommate." Lance rebuked with mock anguish. "And while we're on the subject of what you were planning to do after my hour was up, what were you doing with your free sixty minutes?"

"It wasn't very free, but it was productive. I managed to make contact with the Castle," she said, not bragged, because that would be conceited and she was above doing so. "Allura and Coran say 'hi,' by the way."

Hearing this, excitement and concern sparred across Lance's face. "They made it out of the wormhole okay? That's great news."

"Mhmm. And they've all ready picked up Shiro."

"That's even better news!" Lance cheered. "How soon can they fetch us?"

"Erm." Pidge hesitated, suddenly aware that neither she nor Allura had thought to consider how Lance might have felt about whose retrieval should take precedence. She had made the right choice; taken the most frugal option. She'd stand by that. "The Castle's wormhole generators are on the fritz and since he's closer than us or Hunk, Allura's going after Keith first." This didn't mean she couldn't phrase it in a manner that downplayed her involvement.

Pidge steeled herself for Lance's inevitable bloated tirade of how his rival had gotten the better of him again.

"Makes sense." Lance noted with a shrug.

"You're…okay with that?" Pidge asked, shocked at such a muted reaction.

"I feel a little sorry for the Princess, depriving herself of myself, but we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good. Besides, knowing Keith, he'll need all the help he can get."

Lewd. Pretentious. Arrogant. She was almost relieved at how much more in-character this answer was. "And you don't?"

"Not when I've got you watching my back."

There it was again. Another conversation curveball beaning her in the brain, invoking flattery and frustration in equal measure. What was that even supposed to mean? Was she more than enough help? Did he think that she wasn't much help, but that was okay because he didn't need any? Typical Lance. Couldn't even compliment people correctly. "D-do you now?" she asked, crossing her arms as she gave him a spiteful glare.

"And here I was, thinking we were making progress. You still upset about what I did earlier?"

"I'm still WET because of what you did earlier."

"Your clothes'll dry up soon."

"And you never actually apologized for it."

"Ohhhh, right." Lance muttered sheepishly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you or anything."

"Of course, you just wanted to scare me out of my wits." Pidge said. "Why? I didn't ask it before, but why did you do that?"

The thumb of Lance's free hand rolled under his grip, causing its knuckles to cascade like copper-tinted piano hammers. "I…I got carried away. This sand. That sea. This air. I almost felt like I was back home. And I liked that feeling so much that I fell back on some old habits to keep it going. The stuff I used to do for fun whenever my family and I hit the beach."

Pidge's folded stance slackened by a few unseen degrees. It was hardly a good excuse, not one that warranted immediate forgiveness, but she could feel how true and toothless it was. His answer would've bordered on being sweet, if not for a very distressing implication. "Pretending to drown was something you did for fun during family vacations?"

"I didn't have my Frisbee with me and I'm a blanket-basket set short of a picnic. Granted, my folks stopped being fooled by it pretty fast since I'd have to breath eventually, but I think that prank could make a comeback with the aid of this handy piece of Paladin tech," he gave his upturned helmet and the shoes it contained a little shake.

"Not if I tell them about it first." Pidge threatened.

"Spoilsport." Lance stuck his tongue out at her. Instinctively – and to her regret – she returned the immature gesture. "How about you, Pidge? Anything you miss about Earth?"

Pidge's hands drifted to her sides and slunk down into her pockets. "Yes."

"Neat. Like what?"

"Probably the same stuff you miss." she stated, pinching the interior of the still damp pouches.

"If that was true, I think we'd get along a lot better." Lance reminded. "Come to think of it, I don't know much about you outside of hacking and the likes/dislikes of your phony Swedish alter ego."

"You know enough, then." Pidge said dismissively. "And Pidge Gunderson was supposed to be Norwegian."

"He was part Viking?"

"Enough for the name, but not the accent."

"Do you like Vikings?"

"Yes-No-Maybe."

"Give this a chance, Pidge." Lance encouraged. "This could be a great opportunity for us to share."

"No, Lance," she said, grasping her pockets hard enough to wring water from them. "I'm not in the mood for reminiscing. Now's not a good time to think about the past."

"Why? The past is where all our big victories are."

"Victories?" she echoed, her hands slipping out of her pockets.

"Totally. The exploding giant monsters, the decimated war ships, the freed worlds. Saving the day in style."

"Victories," she repeated. "You really consider those victories?"

"What else would they be?"

"Flukes. Very fortunate flukes."

"How can you say that?" Lance demanded, his tone turning hostile. "We worked hard for those wins!"

"I'm not saying we didn't. But don't pretend like we haven't been really, really lucky so far."

"Like when?!"

"This is why I don't like thinking about the past." she seethed. "You wind up arguing with yourself or the guy next to you about events you can't change."

"Answer my question."

"Have it your way." Pidge rubbed her temples, winding back her most damning piece of proof for later if Lance insisted on maintaining his suicidal naiveté. "Allura thanked us for saving her earlier. She said she was very impressed and very grateful for the rescue."

"As she should be."

"Lance, we screwed that up."

"We're not prisoners or corpses, how is that a screw-up?" he asked. "Coran got us into the base, Hunk broke out Allura, the two of us protected his Lion, Keith got beaten up by Zarkon, and Shiro blasted him away. Everyone got a chance to shine!"

"And the forcefield?"

"Didn't stop us from leaving."

"Yes, but why? None of us did that. It just shut off on its own!"

"Well, in the words of Hunk, the ones he said when you brought that up the first time, who cares?"

"I do, Lance," she declared, her voice rising in intensity to match his own. "And you should too."

"Pidge, I...look, Zarkon was shooting up his own HQ trying to get at Keith. He probably hit a phase processor or quantum sprocket or whatever and that's what caused it."

"Quantum Sprocket?"

"Or whatever." Lance reiterated.

"That's still stupidly lucky."

"No, that's the Evil Emperor being an idiot."

"Even if that's what happened, and neither of us can be fully certain that they're right, what about the other close calls and narrow escapes? One moment, Voltron is giving us claymores and energy cannons, and the next, he falls apart completely when we need him most. Good and bad coincidences have been dogging us from the start. And no matter what we do, none of it would have happened or mattered if...if..." she drifted off

Lance wasn't used to seeing Pidge like this. She was a bit of a recluse when she got really absorbed in her work, but she wasn't what you'd call quiet. She was fiery and critical – especially towards him – but seldom frantic. And she was brave. Very brave. For what little he knew of her, he was certain of that. Here, she was as close to being fearful than he had ever seen before. And it wasn't of some present peril or an aftershock of his cheap trick. She was afraid of something internal, something she knew. And as miserable as it was making her feel, she was trying to protect him from it.

He could leave it alone; he felt that he ought to. This dour turn was also making their walk sluggish, bordering on glacial. If he didn't press her further, she'd let it go and they'd probably never speak of it again. "Pidge?" But that just wasn't how he did things. "Pidge, you can talk to me. What's bothering you?"

Her answer was delicate. She handled her words carefully. Like they were dangerous...volatile.

"Lance...Have you ever given any thought to what might have happened if you hadn't tried to play hooky that night?"

"Which night?"

"THAT night." Pidge stressed. "Our last night on Earth."

"I-." Due to living his life as he liked and acting accordingly, Lance was strapped for regrets. Forgetting his wallet at a counter. Locking his keys in the family van. Splattering the kitchen with ice cream and syrup when he was 6 years old and in such a rush to make his own milkshakes that he neglected to put the lid back on his mom's blender. Few as they were, he seldom forgot them. Specifically, that acute mental agony that crested when he became fully aware of how badly he had messed up. Pidge's Nitro Glycerine nouns and verbs had brought back that sensation, turned it inside out, and sprinkled vinegar on its raw, exposed, and still working nerves. "-I think Hunk and I would have just called it a night and gone to bed."

"And you wouldn't have gone up to the roof to find me."

"I…we…would've wondered where you were. When it got late enough, we would've looked."

A glimmer of bitter triumph shot past her lenses. "Ah, but you also would've been inside of the barracks when Shiro's ship crashed through the atmosphere. You would have been locked in, right?"

"Right."

"So while I'm a little unsure about whether or not I'd have engaged them quick enough to join them by myself, I'm confident that Keith and Shiro would have managed to escape just fine without us," she said. "They'd regroup at Keith's desert shack, head over to those caves, and what do you suppose would have happened next? What would they have found?"

Lance could not deny either question or the stark answer they shared. He attempted to fabricate an embellished or verbose alternative, one that could change the course of this conversation and dispel the insecurities she was grappling with as well as the tension that was swiftly starting to overcome him. However, Pidge had led him along flawlessly, as if she had rehearsed this conversation ad nauseum with herself so that if the subject ever came up, she could control the dialogue with the right set of statements and inquiries, ultimately corralling him into admitting,

"Nothing."

"Exactly. Nothing."

"Whew." Lance rapidly and decoratively fanned himself with his free hand. "That would have been depressing," he noted, digging into his well of platitudes for an uplifting follow-up. "But as a wise man once said, 'If you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great.' And do you know who said that?"

"Shiro."

"Wh-when-you weren't at-?!" Lance sputtered, head spinning from having the tables he was sitting on turn so suddenly. "When did he tell you that?"

"The first day we met after we split up to get the Green and Yellow Lions." Pidge explained.

"Personally? Lucky you. I had to share that moment with the rest of a Career Day high school crowd." Lance's nostrils flared as he recalled how the auditoriums AC had been busted during that arid afternoon and how he had steeled himself, taking strength in Captain Takashi Shirogane enduring the temperature in full uniform without complaint. Admittedly, Shiro was alone on stage at a podium while Lance was cramped amidst rows of perspiring teenagers whose various deodorants – if any - were on their last legs, but he had been charmed regardless.

"And for your information, he got those words from my father."

"He did?" Lance blinked. "Props to him, then. It was the cornerstone of a really inspiring speech. Your dad must be pretty wise."

"And look where that got him."

"Hey, don't go dissing your dad's advice."

"It doesn't even apply right now." Pidge claimed. "It's not about what could go wrong, it's about what could've gone wrong, and how it only went right for the most contrived of reasons."

"I'm contrived?"

"Don't even try that with me, Lance. We can't just laugh this off." Pidge demanded. "Can't you understand how scary this is?"

"I do, but-."

"Then you understand that if you hadn't gone up to that roof to bother me, the whole universe would have been doomed. Allura and Coran never wake up. The Galra get the Red and Yellow Lions. Then they'd make their way to where Green was stashed away. Years, Months, maybe even weeks or days later, they would have scoured the Earth for yours. I mean, why not? They were all ready skulking around the outskirts of our solar system."

"We would've fought back."

"And we would've lost."

"That's not fair, Pidge." Lance said sternly.

"I know! That's what's so infuriating. It just isn't fair!" Pidge scolded. "Shiro risking his life to escape so he could warn us about the invasion, Keith blowing up half the desert to rescue him, and everything I did; all that time spent lying, hacking, studying, sneaking, building, and…and…Lance, I could have gotten sent to prison for that. Court martialed. Or maybe they would have just taken me out back and shot me."

"You forgot to mention the crossdressing," he tried to joke, but the jape was riddled with a nervous tremor.

Pidge was so starved for levity that she almost laughed and only stopped herself because she knew she'd become sick if she did. "Yeah…yeah…had to cut most my hair off for that. I used to be really proud of it. Took forever to grow," she no longer had to resist the allure of the Joitn sun. Its gentleness had been stripped of its hospitable aura and it instead radiated absolute indifference to her plight, casual and uncaring of the wars waged elsewhere and whatever demise was choking itself into manifesting far away from the flawless landscapes it presided over. "I took so many risks. I worked so hard. And it might have been a huge waste of time. Even if Keith, Shiro, or I found the Blue Lion, gotten face to face with it, we wouldn't have been allowed to use it. None of us would've been let in. Not because of anything we did, but because none of us would have been you."

"You're welcome?" Lance said, uncertain if gratitude or blame was being thrown his way. "My bad?"

"Lance, no. It's not your fault. I'm not mad at you." Pidge assured. "It's just frustrating that the only reason we weren't stuck on Earth waiting to get slaughtered by Zarkon is because of a stupidly flimsy coincidence. You weren't even actively aware of what was going on and we still wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you. We can't depend on long shots like that, we need to be better, but so far…" she tugged at the base of her shirt, venting the hot air that had bundled itself between cloth and flesh. "…so far, all we do is luck out. Right place. Right time. Yet, I know it can't last."

"Well," Lance started, tinny and reluctant, the two tonal traits that heralded dread towards harrowing, but inconsequential subjects. Detention, Parking Tickets, Cavities, surely no concern with a comparable calibre to her own, Pidge thought. "While we're talking about fat chances, if you hadn't tried to ditch us, I'd be dead right now."

Pidge's latest footprint was dug deep and clumsily at the heel. "Ah," she tugged at her collar. "Who told you exactly?" she asked, remembering that no one, least of all her, had elected to tell that to the freshly defrosted Blue Paladin.

"Hunk." Lance answered. "I was kind of disappointed that the two of you were planning to bail out on being giant robot pilots."

"For the record, HE wanted to bail, I just wanted to get a jumpstart on rescuing my family."

"By ditching us."

"In the end, I didn't. That's what matters," she said. "And no, I don't plan on trying to leave again."

"But you were gonna." Lance leered. "And because you were gonna, that escape pod was fully equipped and ready to go, right?"

"Right."

"That's how Coran and Hunk got the Castle a new crystal from the Balmera which would power the cryo pods that would patch me up. And while they were there, they found out how bad Shay and her people had it, who we'd go on to liberate, and as a bonus, gave Hunk that spine we both knew was lying in wait beneath all those deep, deep, deep layers of neuroses and phobias," he shook his head with a grin. "Just goes to show, a fine-fine lady can inspire a man to better himself."

"Maybe you should look into that."

"Ew, no, Pidge. I can't creep on Shay. Honor among Bros, bro."

Pidge groaned at the tangent. "Where are you going with this? What is your point?"

"That I'm not the only one that can accidentally change things for the better," he answered. "And to let you know that Allura's not the only one who's grateful that you rescued them."

Pidge's cheeks itched at the praise. "Again, that was us being lucky, Lance."

"Was it?" he prodded, taking note of 'Lucky Lance' as a potential moniker for later use down the line. "Heard you went all lone wolf action hero afterwards. Dashing through laser vents and wrecking Galra goons one-by-one. Did you just trip into everything until we put Sendak on ice?" his eyes hiked up into twin thin slants of kickable smug. "Oh man. I'm just picturing it now. You just tumbling around the Castle, knocking over bad guys like an angry green bowling ball. That's so adorable."

"It wasn't like that."

"Adorable!" Lance giggled.

"I'm not adorable! I-I mean, not then. I wasn't adorable THEN!" Pidge said, flustered at having her struggles against the Galra general's remaining troops caricatured so mercilessly. "I was-."

"-in control?" Lance offered.

Efficient or quick-witted were the two ways she wanted to end her sentence; no grandiose claims, just enough positivity to stress that her efforts didn't boil down to slipping on a banana peel, but Lance's suggestion was inoffensive enough and deceptively so. "Yes," she scrutinized the implications behind the statement and ran it by the near-commandeering of the Castle. "No. Not in total control."

"That's pretty obvious. If you had been in total control, nothing bad would have happened. But you were in control of what you were doing. You weren't Lady Luck and Father Fortune's sock puppet of destiny."

"Yes, but they might have helped," she said uneasily, trying not to imagine where either abstract being would stick their arm up if she had been their sock puppet of destiny.

"And there you have it," he said with such finality that if there had been a table present, he would have smacked it for emphasis, using his hand as a lifeline-riddled gavel. "Chance always plays a part, but it doesn't run the whole show."

"I could have told you that." Pidge grumbled

"You say so, but all I heard coming out of your mouth was that we shouldn't ever try to do things on purpose since a coinflip's going to decide everything anyway."

"You're oversimplifying my words."

"True. I did cut out a lot of whining."

"I wasn't whining," she pouted. "My points were valid."

"Kinda." Lance wagged his open palm at her. "I did like the part where I singlehandedly saved the universe and assembled Team Voltron without even trying."

Couldn't this dolt read the mood? Pidge thought. Understand that she hadn't phrased it like that? "You shouldn't think of that as a good thing."

"Tough. Because I will." his posture straightened, affording him his full height. Pidge hadn't noticed how hunched he had been since they had started talking. "It's further proof that I'm just that amazing," he boasted. Pidge smacked her forehead, barely missing her glasses. Useless. Why had she even bothered? "And that one person can make a difference." The eyes of the Green Paladin widened at these words. Had she heard them right? Or had she just given herself a concussion? "Like me," he added, motioning towards himself, before twirling his wrist and aiming his hand at a very specific direction. "Like you."

That was what was so dangerous about hanging around Lance for too long. He'd make a terrible first impression, then a second, possibly a third, but after several encounters, it was likely that - while you had been trying your best not to think about him in the slightest – he'd have studied you enough to find the best way to get under your skin, and if need be, butter you up. No matter how high your cholesterol for such content was.

"Accidentally," she insisted, not taking the bite.

"And what's so bad about that?!" Lance declared. "If I can start a revolution and you can save a planet-moon-monster-fossil-thing unintentionally, then we'd be unstoppable if we tried doing things on purpose. Throw in the other Paladins and there's no telling what we could accomplish. Quintuple Space Medals of Honor all around."

"I wish I could believe that, Lance." And she did. She wished she could just dismiss all the backstabbing bounty hunters, alien warlocks, and cruel despots as meagre obstacles and nuisances; restore wonderment to the vast void they had infected with brutality and repression. "But I can't stop thinking about how while we're down here, Zarkon's up there getting stronger."

"Aha, there's your problem, Pidge. Perspective. You've got a very limited perspective."

He looked lowly at her, more than what was necessary, more than usual. Not in a manner that would have provoked a 'my eyes are up here,' but with an excessive tilt of the head that said, 'you're all the way down there.'

"Was that a dig at my height?"

"Partially," he offered her a smile so sincere that Pidge only sort of wanted to shatter it in reprisal. "But mostly, it's all about your attitude. If not blowing up Zarkon's stuff is making you antsy, then think of this afternoon and every minute not spent blowing his stuff up as us...giving him a break."

"A break?" Pidge barked in disbelief.

"It's the sporting thing to do when your enemy's at a major disadvantage."

Pidge recognized that tone. It was the same one of fraudulent surrender he had used when he had a laser cannon in his Lion's mouth and an ace up his sleeve. "The 10,000 years of no Voltron wasn't enough of a headstart?"

"It isn't when we're driving it," he folded his fingers so that his thumb was pointing at her while his pinkie was being aimed at him. "Between my panache, your brains, Hunk's newfound passion, Shiro's leadership, and Keith's...Keith's..."

"He's kind of angry." Pidge offered, though 'better piloting skills' had been her first choice.

"He is very angry." Lance corrected. "You combine all that and we've basically got Emperor Eggplant outgunned."

"He has an army." And if there was a word for an armed force that was bigger than an army, Pidge would have used it.

"He's got a bunch of kiss-ups and robots doing what he says. You can have a million arms, but that won't make you any less singular. In that way, we outnumber him 7-to-1," he reasoned. "Like I said. Perspective."

His perspective made Zarkon out to be a malignant intelligence whose body spanned over half the universe with firepower aimed out of every follicle; a cybernetic manticore trying to devour all of existence with a trillion mouths. Lance's words acknowledged the sheer scope of the threat they faced. But they outnumbered him. In the same way that ants outnumbered people. That's how they outnumbered him. But that didn't make Lance wrong.

And ants didn't have access to a power titanic android either.

It was a surreal plush toy of a comfort in a granite-edged galaxy.

"Is that it? All I need to do is accentuate the positive?"

"Ideally," he grimaced slightly. "I'll admit. That's easier said than done depending on the situation. Like, I pressed Hunk for more details about Sendak's siege to find out if I had managed to do something cool during it and just forgot because part of my brain was leaking out of my ears while it was going on," he shrugged. "I remembered shooting him when I saw that he had you in that big, clunky claw of his. Thought I might have done more, drunken master style, but from what he'd heard, Hunk said that was pretty much it. So I spent most of that little adventure with my eyes closed and my insides bleeding. Those guys didn't even cuff my body. They just assumed that I was a goner."

That last battle at the heart of the Castle had been such a brutal blur that Pidge had nearly forgotten about that small, but integral part the bruised and comatose Blue Paladin had played in it. Much easier to grasp was his indignation at having not been restrained like Shiro had; how he took it as an insult, perhaps even believing Keith would have gotten tied up if their positions had been reversed, instead of the blessing that it was. "Must've been rough," she said with intentional neutrality.

"You bet it was. When I was even a little bit awake, it felt like my eyelids weighed a ton, like hot nails were being hammered into my bones and joints. And my suit, euch, it was like it was crushing me the entire time, but I was also afraid of it being removed, that it was the only thing keeping me together, and if its buckles loosened I'd kind of just decompress into a big puddle of me." Lance shuddered, but his description, while painful, lacked any sort of bitterness. 'It's over. That moment passed. I survived. Makes for a nice story,' the omission seemed to say. "Again though. Perspective. I didn't do much, but at the very least, I got to shoot Sendak's arm off."

Pidge winced. "Actually..." She ought to let him have this. He wasn't even really boasting and it was undeniable that he had suffered plenty during that attack, but that need for clarity, that love of the forthright made her say, "...I was the one who did that."

This didn't stop Lance in his tracks, but it did make him wobble on those long olive stilts he called his legs. "No. No that's not-," he ran his tongue over his upper lip in a pensive sweep. "Feel free to correct me. I was phasing in and out a lot during that fight. One moment, I was shooting him, smack dab in the back. The next , you were free and Sendak was down a hand and screaming, NOOOOOOOO," he said, growling out that last word in guttural imitation.

"The shot made him drop me. That really did happen. Then a few seconds later I disabled his cybernetic fist with my Bayard."

"Damn." Lance cursed. "I'm glad you didn't get hurt and it's extremely cool that you hacked that guy's arm off, but..." he sighed.

"It was pretty cool." Pidge cut him off. "Keep in mind though, Sendak would have used me as a hostage to get the others to stand down," she rubbed her shoulders, remembering that gauntlet's oversized talons pressing down on them, ready to pierce, willing to crush, and completely immovable from where they held her. With the dubious benefit of hindsight, it had been a disturbingly fragile predicament. If that fuzzy-eared fascist had lacked a little less restraint, he wouldn't have tried to use her to bargain – which was demeaning in itself – he would have simply tightened his grip and killed her; squeezing her ribs into her heart, demolishing her spine, and popping her intestines like gory balloons before tossing her lifeless body aside so he could go on to do the same to whoever he liked. She hadn't been fearful then. Wasn't given time to process the sheer ease of her execution. She had struggled. She had growled. She had planned. But she hadn't prayed for a miracle. She didn't think she needed it. And then she had gotten one anyway. "Your shot gave us a fighting chance," and with this assessment came the realization that she hadn't actually said, "Thanks for that, Lance."

"That's a generous interpretation. I think your attitude's grown a few feet," Lance said, his grin returning. "No need to thank me though. There was no way I was going to let that bat-faced cyclops pulp the gutsiest mastermind I know."

Pidge's lips, which had been set in a dour line, curled to mirror his smile. Revenge was a likelier fuel for Lance's fateful volley, but the possibility that seeing a teammate in danger gave him the crucial nudge he needed to call upon his Bayard with a concussed will, lift it with shredded muscles, and pull the trigger with an enfeebled hand, was nice. And that it was to save her, made it doubly appealing. "No. I suppose you wouldn't have."

"Not if I can help it anyway. And back then, I could. That's what it boils down to, I think. We got to be proud of the things we've done and grateful when we get our way. Even if it feels a little out of left-field. I don't know about you, but I wasn't that bummed out when the Balmera ate that giant laser-eye lizard, were you?"

Pidge just shook her head.

"Thought so. And, hey, if that last big space battle's depressing you – I personally think we could've kicked more butt if Voltron hadn't spazzed out like you said – don't think of it as Team Voltron narrowly escaping with their lives," he gestured ahead of them with his middle and index finger, thumb cocking back the abstract hammer of air. "Think of it like this. In the span of one Hour of Power, five mighty metal Lions and their equally fantastic Paladins charged into the center of the Galra Empire and made it their den," he fired, wrist flipping back with imaginary recoil. "Shredding the drapes, scooting all over Zarkon's carpet, getting laser dander everywhere. Zero casualties. Without a scratch except the ones they made. And then rescuing a princess for good measure. Dang. Saying all that is making me wish we'd been recording the entire thing. Just think of how nuts the universe would have gone if they saw a video of Shiro blasting Zarkon into his own base."

Dissimilar to what she had done when presented with most of Lance's schemes, Pidge allowed herself to think of the impact such a video would have. Outrage and denial would come from the Galra themselves. They'd spin it as the Paladins being cowards, ambushing the throne and then fleeing into the night, and their Emperor as a dauntless impeccable monarch for surviving it. Everyone else, however, would be shocked at first. They they'd find it funny that the Emperor had been hit at all given how he was surrounded by his soldiers and his war machines and his mystics where his defences were supposedly strongest. At the news that the Paladins had gotten away with it, escaped with their lives, they would cheer, point, and shout, 'There! Look! The Galra can't be all that. They can't even protect their master from a few candy-colored wind-up cats!' Their eyes would be filled with vicious glee, schadenfreude, vindication and...and...and that elusive galvanising force. The presence that had pulled her onward in her investigations and through all her battles; cooed silently into her ear, connecting intellect and instinct, encouraging study and invention for its whispers insisted that all things could be known and improved upon. The concept that Zarkon was dead set on erasing, what he had robbed from Rolo and the King's poor doomed digital ghost. It was what she had little of at that moment and what enabled Lance's outrageous optimism. Hope. That video might...it would...inspire hope.

"42," she said.

"42? Why 42?"

"I counted." Pidge flashed him a grin, bright and fulsome. "The rescue only lasted 42 minutes."

"But...but Hour of Power!"

"We were 18 minutes shy of that, I'm afraid. Unless you're okay with lying to your fans."

"Hrrrrgh! Then...then we can say that it took us less than an hour to rescue Allura and pull one over on Zarkon. Because we're just that skilled. How's that?"

"It's so-so. Hour of Power would've been better."

"Bite me."

Pidge chuckled. "You've really come a long way from wanting to ditch Arus back when we didn't have Voltron."

Lance smirked, perhaps reminded of the tri-Lion snake that was almost formed. "And you've gone the other direction. What happened to that wiseguy who wanted to stay and protect a planet we didn't even know was inhabited?"

"I made him up."

"Details. Details. Make a sequel, why don't you?" Lance scoffed. "As to how I've changed, I'd like to think getting caught in that explosion and surviving has done wonders for shrinking my fear of death and injury."

"How'd that even happen, anyway?" Pidge asked.

"Coran didn't tell you?"

"He told us how you pushed him out of the way, but not much else."

"Oh. All right. Rover came into the room and blew up the crystal."

"That's not possible." Pidge said. "He was with me when it happened."

"Then it was a drone that looked him, I guess."

"The Castle shouldn't have let it inside then. It was keyed to warn us if any Galra tech had entered the vicinity."

"Rover WAS Galra tech."

"I tweaked his internals so he'd synch up with our systems." Pidge bristled. "Unless Sendak found a way to mimic the coding, I don't see how...how...wh-why are you looking at me like that?"

"Ho-ho-Holy cow!" Lance exclaimed. "It's your fault I exploded!"

"My-no-No!" Pidge denied. "You can't pin this on me!"

"You said so yourself. You adopted Rover, the Galra dressed one of their drones as Rover, and then he blew up the Castle's Crystal. Seems pretty straightforward."

"W-we would have had to deal with Sendak sooner or later."

"No argument here, but in this case, it was sooner. And sooner got me blown up." Lance let out a faux-whimper. "Why'd you do it, Pidge? After all those milk cartons and baby carrots I gave you during lunch and dinner back at the Garrison to improve your height and eyesight...and THIS is how you repay me!"

He released a choked and chortled sob that let Pidge know that he didn't actually feel betrayed or upset, but that he was going to hold this over her, bopping her head with it whenever he saw fit or needed to bum a favour or get the last word in an argument. Like Crow he was, Pidge thought. "Even if that was the case-."

"It is."

"-I think stopping Sendak from stealing the Castle and all our Lions more than made up for it."

"Ah. But you wouldn't have succeeded if I hadn't gotten you out of his literal clutches. Alas!" he let his wrist kiss his forehead as he arched his back. "You still owe me one...or...maybe you can make it up to me right now."

"I don't have t-." Pidge held her tongue. The longer this notion lasted, the more Lance would cling to it. If she resolved this now, he was liable to forget all about her debatable involvement with Rover's doppelganger – Rover. Poor Thing - and his demands could be heard, but denied if they were too extreme. "How?"

"By making us even," he jingled his helmet, causing her shoes to make muffled knocks against its frame. "You forgive. I forgive."

"Really?" his crime had been less grave, his blunder hadn't gotten anyone hurt or threatened the mission, but her anger was still fresh and her humiliation pressed for tenure. "You want to cash in me allegedly almost causing your death for you making me think you had drowned?"

"Keep the change," he winked.

"No refunds."

"Does that mean you accept my earlier apology?"

"Yes." Pidge knew that, objectively, she was getting the better deal. "I accept it." She still felt cheated though. And did Lance really think she was that petty? She would have waved this off or forgotten about it eventually. There's no need for this, she thought as the part of his stomach she had punched caught her eye. It was darkened, irritated, and would likely bruise. "You're forgiven."

"Thanks," he nodded. "Um, I really am sorry about worrying you like that. It wasn't cool...or right and...I'm sorry," he repeated, words failing him at last.

"I believe you," And she meant what she had said, because she could sense that Lance had meant what he had said too.

It would have been a pleasant enough way to end their exhausting and unexpectedly productive discussion, phrases of reconciliation exchanged as they reached their destination. But the Blue Lion was still far away and Lance himself, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. The vocal sort, to be precise.

"So...about Earth."

"Lance, please, I'm-I'm not ready to talk about what I miss. It would hurt too much. My mom..."

"Then let's change this up a little. Missing things won't do us any good, so...how about we talk about things back home that we're looking forward to enjoying again after we kick Zarkon into the nearest supernova? We could make a game out of it!"

"That's practically the same."

"It so isn't, Pidge. Instead of talking about what we left behind, we'll be talking about what we're going to get! Competitively!"

"How would that would that even work?"

"Glad you asked. We'll take turns talking what Earth stuff we like, and the first one who runs out of things to say, loses."

"That could go on forever."

"It would, if we didn't do it alphabetically."

"Why alphabetically?"

"First, it's an easy rule to remember. I say an A-word, you say a B-word, and so on until we switch for the next set. And second, I really miss the English alphabet. Letters I recognize. Making up sentences I can actually read. We gotta keep the vowels and consonants alive up here, man."

"I don't think that's necessary. We've got no problem understanding Allura or Coran or...any other alien for that matter. They all seem to speak...English."

"Yeah. That's-that's weird." Lance noted.

"It's been convenient for us. Very convenient. But now that I bring it up, it's a bit too convenient."

"And not very fair to the people back home who don't know it very well."

"Or at all."

"Mmmm...so back to that game of mine. How about I start?"

"Lance, I think I'd like some quiet to process everything we've talked abou-."

"Apples," he said, ignoring Pidge's glower.

"Bungee Jumping"

"You used to Bungee Jump? That's pretty awesome."

"It was also a joke."

"Hey, that's against the rules."

"I don't want to play this game." Pidge stated.

"Tsk. Suit yourself," he said, scratching the back of his head petulantly and exposing an armpit that was as tan and smooth as the rest of him. "I guess I'll just have to tell everyone back at the Castle that I beat you in a battle of wits. Heck, maybe I ought to be piloting the Green Lion since I'm clearly the most inquisitive Paladin on the team."

Pidge imagined him riding around in Green and recklessly abusing the upgrades she had painstakingly installed and tested. She dismissed it as improbable.

She thought of him flaunting her forfeiture to their friends, but they wouldn't take it seriously or hold it against her.

The idea of losing to him? Losing in a battle of wits, however trivial? That stuck around and refused to leave.

"Burgers."

"What kind?"

"Bungee Jump Flavored."

"Smarmy little-Concerts."

"Dinosaurs."

"Does that qualify?'

"This was your idea. You tell me."

"They're all dead."

"You can still see their bones at museums, Lance."

Rather than give her the point or argue further, Lance snapped his fingers and let out a fascinated oh. "You know what would be neat? If there was a Voltron...made out of dinosaurs instead of Lions."

"In concept, maybe."

"And in real life too, I bet. Red Triceratops and Green Stegosaurus fists, Yellow Pterodactyl Flight Pack, Black T-Rex Head and Upper Torso."

"What about..." Pidge hesitated, dimly aware of what she might enable. "What about the Blue one?"

"Brontosaurus."

"Okay, that could...oh...OH."

Lance's eyebrows bobbed up and down with rakish purpose. "Forming the legs."

"Not another word."

"And lower torso."

"You stop that. You stop right there."

"Intimidating our enemies into submission with the mere sight of its-!"

"Put that image in my head and I will end you, man!" Pidge threatened.

"-Thick..."

"I'll make it look like an accident!" she claimed. And her genius intellect might have thought of the perfect way to do so if it wasn't devoting itself to pondering how such a machine would be assembled; the appearance and function of both its components and the body complete.

"Throbbing."

"No one will ever know it was me!"

"Prehensile."

Particularly, one specific section of the theoretical Voltron. "I've always thought Coran would make a good replacement Paladin!"

"Laser-spewing."

A region of android anatomy that was coming into focus far faster and clearer than the rest of it. "Don't you dare!"

"Football-field length."

"GAH!" Dear lord, there was no stopping it now. It wriggled, it grabbed, it smashed, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Except it wasn't a thumb. It was practically a third arm, punching its way through her prudish mental barriers. "I'm not listening! You can't make me listen!" she warned, pressing her palms to her ears while knowing that it wouldn't imbue any true protection. The silhouette loomed, its contours unambiguous. It only required the faintest implications of the word to come into being. Lance just needed to make sure she heard him say,

"Tail." Lance concluded, fundamentally altering the nature of the outline with seamless deftness.

Pidge groaned, grateful and annoyed as she unburdened her ears. "You are the worst."

Lance said nothing in reply, opting to continue their game instead with, "Eggs."

"Frisbees." Pidge said, deciding she'd get back at him later.

"Gum"

"Hippos"

"Ink."

"Ink? That's hardly unique to Earth."

"When was the last time you saw a pen?"

"...Jam."

"Strawberry?"

Pidge shrugged. "What else?"

Lance grinned in return. "Kiwis. Both sorts."

"Locomotives."

"Malls."

"Noodles."

"Any kind in particular?"

"After eating the equivalent of alien MRE goop for so long, I'd slurp or gobble just about any of them."

"I'm with you there. Oranges."

Popcorn would have been a valid submission. Cheese. Barbeque. Wasabi. And good old Butter. But if they talked about non-gelatinous meals three times in a row, it was liable to incite cravings they'd be hard pressed to satisfy. "Protractors."

"Quarters. I've got nothing to flip out here."

"Revolving Doors."

"Sunflowers. The really tall ones."

"I'll get you some for your birthday."

"Aw, you know when my birthday is," he lightly tapped his chin. "And, the one you told Hunk and me-?"

"Wasn't my real one. Theme Parks."

"Bro, we made you a cake."

"You did." Pidge licked her lips, finishing the slick circle with a quick raspberry. "And it was delicious."

"Hmph. Ukuleles."

"Vol-." Pidge bit that very same tongue to keep what had become the most prominent 'V' word in her vocabulary from losing her the contest. "-llideogames."

"I'll let that one slide." If Pidge had been a paranoid person, she would've entertained the thought that Lance had actually planned that, but she wasn't so she didn't. So far, she had been absolutely right about everything. And paranoid people were never right. "Windmills."

"Xylophones."

"Foul!" Lance cried. "Come on, Pidge. Use one of your braniac words instead. Leave the easy x's for the rest of us!"

"I'm saving them for Round 3," Pidge claimed, her tone a tacit confession that she didn't think there'd be a Round 3. "Plus, you've had plenty of experience with exes. You'll do fine when your turn comes up."

"Yo-yos." Lance grumbled.

"Zoos."

"That concludes Round 1," he noted. "Liking it so far?"

"It's mostly harmless," answered Pidge, who did feel a smidgen lighter now that their talks had taken a gentler turn. The game required her to think, not to a strenuous degree, but enough so that it wasn't a mindless exercise. The sense of accomplishment gained from each conquered letter was meagre, but genuine and well-earned. It let her appreciate their surroundings – their tender warmth and brightness - as she was no longer in danger of becoming passive and listless with the tranquil passage of the tide. In fact, their gaits had quickened, they'd be at the Blue Lion by the end of the next set. "I guess I could go for another round." Her inevitable victory was also a huge incentive. Some might prefer a challenge, but in her opinion, competitions were a lot more pleasant and a lot less frustrating when one knew winning a sure thing.

"Fantastic!" Lance clapped. "Because it's your turn to start."

"Autumn."

"Bunnies."

"Cats."

"Daisies."

"More flowers?"

"I'm pretty, they're pretty. It fits."

Pidge shook her head. "Elephants."

"Fireflies."

"Geese."

"Holidays."

"Internet." Pidge sighed. "My inbox must be so full of spam right now."

"Preach." Lance said. "Jungle Gyms."

"Kittens."

"You said Cats earlier."

"Still works."

"Lounge Chairs."

"Movies."

"On the plus side, we can marathon all the cool ones we missed after we saved the universe."

"And their Deleted Scenes."

"My man! Or should I say, Nunchucks."

"If you wish really hard, maybe your Bayard will give you one."

"That it could. Yours gave you about a hundred gadgets, and I think mine could use a CQC mode."

"Heh, what if-." Pidge stifled a snort. "-what if it just gave you a small chain with a single chuck at the end of it?"

"Wow, that...that would suck. And, yeah, our Bayards aren't shaped right for making nunchucks, are they?"

"They'd also turn off the moment you let go of the handle."

"True. Maybe if we ever find Shiro's Bayard, he'll let me tie it up with mine."

"Assuming it isn't destroyed or just plain irretrievable, why would he ever agree to that?"

"Why wouldn't he? He all ready has a laser kung-fu grip. 'Sides, I'd give it back to him for Voltron fights. Can't wait to see what'll pop out when he jams it in."

Pidge gagged. "Olives."

"Peanutbutter."

"You jerk. That's my favourite snack."

"You had your chance last round, Pidge." Lance said. "And I'm not hearing a Q."

"Quizzes."

"Rain."

"Sunglasses"

"Tacos."

"Umbrellas."

"Valentines."

Pidge snorted. "Right. I'm sure you missed a lot of those."

"Rude. I got more than my fair share."

"Waterparks." Pidge said confidently, knowing that this strangely enjoyable game had reached its climax.

"Xerox."

"What?"

"No, you all ready said a W word. Now you've got to say one that starts with Y."

"Yo-wait, why do you know what Xerox is?"

"It was the brand of our family printer and what my parents called the stuff that came out it. I was like, 8, when I found out you could also call them photocopies." he explained. "Actually, that reminds me of a funny story. Want to hear it? I promise that it's tasteful and kinda tame."

"Go ahead."

"Well, when I was a kid, around 4 or 5, I'd always bug my mom to draw me stuff. I liked to draw, but because I was barely out of my baby years, I was pretty bad at it. So whenever I wanted something in my head jotted down on paper, I'd go to my mom."

To all outside observation, Pidge was paying full attention to Lance's anecdote. Her eyes were alert, her head nodded at appropriate junctures, and her mouth was set in a respectably neutral dash. A glance inside her head would paint a different picture, one of splotched cussing and turpentine calculations.

"I'm not going to say my mom is bad at drawing, but she wasn't nearly good enough for what I kept asking for. Dragons. Spaceships. Superheroes. Knights. Just like I saw them in my comics and books. EXACTLY like how I saw them in my comics and books. Fantastic and complicated and handed over immediately if not sooner."

Xerox.

"She didn't want to let me down though. So what she'd do was listen to what I wanted. Then she'd grab pictures of what I wanted from wherever she could: my personal junior library, posters that were lying around, old magazines, my lunchbox, even stickers. She'd print them if she had to."

Archaic. Analogue. Ancient. And most vexingly, Known. Known to her desperately trendy and vapid teammate.

"Afterwards, she'd lay some tracing paper over them and, well, trace. I wasn't impressed. I thought I could've done that. That it wasn't a real drawing. That's when she took out the carbon paper."

She knew a fair amount of words beginning with the letter X, certainly more than Lance did, but a specific object exclusive to life on Earth?

"I didn't know it was carbon paper though. I just saw that it was one of those dark purple sheets my folks brought out whenever they had to do boring receipt stuff. She called it magic, if you can believe it. Even I was sceptical. Then she put a piece of blank paper beneath it, the definitely not blank tracing paper on top of it, and started tracing on top of the lines she had all ready traced."

Xenon? X-Rays? Xanthic Acid? Xylene? You could probably find all those in space somewhere. They were universal compounds, radiation types, and elements. Roman numerals wouldn't count either, despite them being outright numbers. And Xylophone was no longer an option.

"I was confused. I didn't see the point. I couldn't see what she was doing. Why was she going over the same lines again?"

There was no way she'd be able to provide an adequate answer if they made it to the 24th letter. And how could they not? A-C-E-G-I-K-M-O-Q-S-U-W-Y, on top of everything else, that skinny sneak would have every single vowel at his disposal, leaving her to do all the heavy lifting.

"She did it again with another piece of drawn-on tracing paper, taking little peeks beneath the carbon paper every now and then. A couple of minutes later, she lifted up those sheets and showed me..."

This wasn't fair! She was going to lose! She was going to lose in the most basic form of mind game and he'd never let her hear live it down! All because of Xerox! All because his mom used it to draw him-.

"A cowboy riding a tiger. Just like I asked. I couldn't believe it."

"You got something against horses?" she asked, curiosity genuinely piqued by such fantastic albeit childish imagery. As a bonus, talking about this further would buy her more time.

"Nah, horses are fine, but I just thought it'd be cool to see a gunslinger ride around on something else."

"Didn't you find it strange that what she 'drew' with her magic paper looked exactly like what she had traced only with some of it shuffled around?"

"Strange? I thought it was incredible for that exact reason," he shook his head, ashamed, but chiefly amused. "I didn't know any better."

"What did she do about backgrounds?"

"Not much. A curvy line from end-end, put a cactus on it for deserts, an igloo for the Arctic, a tree if I wanted a forest, a volcano for...volcanoes."

"You mentioned spaceships. Your requests ever go cosmic?"

"Oh, Pidge, they went EVERYWHERE!" he laughed. "And my mom was just too happy to oblige. Martian fighting a Wizard? No problem. Genie granting wishes for a mermaid? Sure. Let's give him a scuba mask so he can breathe down there. A Pirate Ship sailing on the Sun? Arrgh! You got it, matey. I get that they were just a bunch of cheap collages, but, um..." he trailed off, suddenly demure.

"They made you happy."

"Yeah, they did. And they made me think she was the greatest artist that ever lived. And you know what?"

"What?"

"Part of me still thinks that."

"She sounds really cool, Lance."

"Totally. I wish you and Hunk could have met her and the rest of the brood before we became Defenders of the Universe. Another thing to look forward to, I guess."

"I'd like that." Pidge said. And why wouldn't she? After all, Lance's mother, like she had done with her son, had given Pidge exactly what she needed. The Green Paladin was reminded of one of the most fundamental and layered aspects of any competition: overcoming your opposition. Sometimes this meant being the greater competitor, smarter, stronger, more well-equipped, or accompanied by an exceptional team. Being able to play the game better was also a welcome asset. But as the player pool shrank, the distance between the contestants, the mathematics inherent in the rules and their personal aptitude, diminished. Tics, Habits, Attitudes, and Preferences became more essential to victory as you tried to bluff and outguess the guy playing opposite of you.

There was no way that Lance's mother had the raw artistic ability to produce what had been asked of her, but she knew her audience would be too astounded by her deception to care. Pidge might not have known the right words that started with X, if there were any that applied left, but she did know Lance. If she couldn't beat the game, she'd just have to make him lose. And if it was impossible for him to mess up on his own, she'd just have to help him do that.

"Yoghurt."

"Hmm?"

"Yoghurt," she repeated. "Your turn."

"Right, right. Slipped my mind. Uh, Zeppelins."

"Shoot. I was hoping to use that one later."

"You'll think of something."

"Probably." Pidge said. "You want to keep going though? We're almost there," she pointed ahead of them.

Lance followed her finger's course and saw they couldn't be more than 50 feet from his Lion's azure forcefield. "Whoah, we are really close now."

"I'm not surprised. We have been talking awhile," he heard Pidge say. "Hey, what's that on those rocks next to Blue?"

Lance squinted, noting the dark splayed out shape Pidge must have seen. "That's just some laundr, I laid out to dry. Coat, pants, socks, the usual."

"Want to end this now? Call it a tie?"

"Meh, I think we have enough time for one last round." Lance said, gauging the distance. "Let's see how far we get. That okay?"

"I'm game."

"All right, then," he looked up at wispily clouded sky, wondering how he'd start this off. "Anchovies."

"Bikinis."

Faster than his thoughts could fully form, par for the course when his interest was aroused, Lance swung his head leftwards. To dole out some crude commentary or to express blunt disbelief at what Pidge had just said; perhaps ask her to repeat it to get a rise out of his fellow Paladin, he wasn't sure and he never would be as whatever would have come out of his mouth was lodged in his throat and died there out of shock. In a few minutes, hours, and planets, the only part of this moment he'd remember – or to be precise, the only part he was unable to forget – wouldn't involve anything he did or thought during. He'd only remember...her. Her and the many parts of her.

She didn't look any different, but she didn't look the same.

Eyes half-lidded with amusement instead of widened with mania or narrowed with spite. Her hair, usually an unkempt puff of jagged fibres, hung loose and free, its ends still wet with seawater; strands of it had been tucked behind her ear, calling attention to that dainty shell of cream that it usually obscured if not outright covered. Following the soft curve of that exposed lobe brought him down to the firm comely column of her neck which was angled so that he was drawn to its front where the high rim of her shirt had wilted to expose the nubile nubs of her collarbone. Lance's gaze could not have gone any lower because of the shirt, but it snapped up in reflex just the same and was apprehended by an arresting smile; it was neither a decadent monk fish display nor a cutting rumple of a sneer. It was a smile. Small, coy, and all the more sultry for it.

Lance had accepted the revelation of Pidge's true identity as best he could in that he had plainly and simply accepted it. His acceptance was so immediate and lacking in intrigue that it horseshoed into outright dismissal; breaching the tenuous membrane between "Oh, how nice," and "Yeah? And?" So what if Pidge had withheld and fabricated a few choice anatomical and genetic facts on her dossier? That didn't make her or him any dumber, more incompetent, or less of a pain the neck. Pidge Gunderson, the surly short smartypants of his old Garrison gang, was practically identical in action and appearance to Katie Holt, the surly short smartypants of his new Paladin posse. Nothing had changed, nothing would change, nothing had to change.

His Paladin career and workplace, however perilous, had been most accommodating to this attempted nonchalance. Between getting handcuffed to a tree by bounty hunters, aiding in the liberation of a living planetoid, and having their own headquarters turning against them (but with an unwelcome fixation on eliminating him in particular), he had little opportunity to mull over how one of the most frustratingly brilliant boys he knew was a girl, and he didn't want any. Everyone called her Pidge. Everyone treated her like Pidge. Pidge was still Pidge. End of story.

This…that…this face fixing him with a rascally stare didn't look like Pidge. Rather, that's what he believed, initially and desperately believed. The more he studied it and thought, the more he was forced to admit that it was how Pidge had always looked. The thick brushstroke brown petals of his…her…eyebrows were the same. Those eyes below them were still a lustrous copper. Ditto to the slight curvature of her small nose and the hushed thinness of her lips. Back when he was substantially less informed about why it was so, Lance believed that if Pidge had a somewhat stronger chin, he'd go from (objectively) cute to youthfully handsome. Which wasn't to say that it was a bad chin, just that because of it, he…she skirted the line between. And some chicks were into that, so more power to him…her…whatever. Now she had gone from being androgynously attractive to (objectively) cute. Good for her.

But that word. That cursed word.

Bikinis.

This shouldn't have happened. This car crash coalescence of sight and sound. If she had said anything else – Bumper Cars, Bread, Beetles - Lance might have been able to handle seeing Pidge like this; acknowledge this not-at-all-new yet remarkably fresh angle he was seeing her from without any turmoil whatsoever. If she had said that word with the messy scampish appearance he was accustomed to, he would have thought about a few of the scantily-clad actress and supermodel pin-ups he had seen in his life, she'd bop him on the arm for doing so, and he'd accuse her of setting him up; some harmless, good-natured ribbing.

The combination of her looking like that and saying that word was giving him ideas. Rather, it was giving him one idea. A most gripping and unwanted idea:

Katie would look good in one.

No. No. That wasn't right. That wasn't true. This was wrong.

"Lance?" the girl from the photograph asked. "You okay?"

That wasn't fair. Okay, maybe it was a little true. She might, theoretically, look good in a bikini. What he meant to think was that she wouldn't look good in most bikinis.

"We've here. Your Lion's right in front of us."

Pidge had a pretty nice bod-physi-musculature. While her casual attire usually concealed it, her Paladin armour was a lot more flattering when it came to highlighting how defined her arms, legs, and...backside were.

"You going to say anything?"

They wouldn't look awful in a regular swimsuit, but there were varieties of swimwear that would...compliment them more than others.

"This is taking a little too long. Tell you what, I'll give you until the count of three to answer. And if you don't, you forfeit. Sound good? Good."

Perhaps something sporty. Flattering, but practical. Like what athletes wore; garments that helped them with what they did to stay trim and showed everybody just how trim they were.

"One."

Leagues better for enjoying the beach than soggy shirts, shoes, and shorts. That'd be appropriate. And fair. It was only fair.

"Two."

Lance blamed himself for this. Tricking Pidge into wading into the sea after him had dampened her hair – making it hang low – and wet her skin, causing it to shimmer in places. Now, here she stood, with everything he was familiar with scrubbed away to expose a novel beguiling layer of utter distraction that he couldn't ignore.

"Thr-"

He didn't notice that while she had been pointing him towards his Lion and his laundry, Pidge had smoothed out and fixed her hair as best as she was able, pocketed her glasses, pulled the neck of her shirt a tad forward so that it would show a little of what was beneath it but not too much, clasped her hands behind her back, and fixed her face with an expression that coaxed more than teased; a look combined with the mention of two-piece beachwear that would – she gambled – spark all sorts of conflicting sentiments in that vacuous head of his and proved to be increasingly difficult to keep from shattering into devilish snickers and from shrinking away in embarrassment for enacting such a ploy.

"C-Cayaks?"

"EEEEEENK!" Pidge blared, feeling ruthless and relieved. "That starts with a K!"

"D-Do over!" Lance cried, the announcement of his loss having fished him out of his flustered fugue. The girl from the photograph, cheeks still full of babyfat not yet made lean by military drills and diets, had vanished. In her place was his regular incorrigible intellectual, the sight of whom wasn't entirely unwelcome; Lance knew where he stood with this grinning gremlin. "You played dirty!"

"It was just a word, Lance." Pidge pointed out as she slipped her glasses back on. "What's the matter? Did it make you think of anybody you knew? Allura, perhaps? Or maybe someone back at the barracks? Lisa Kaga? Shannon Izumo? Cinda Qiligasz?"

"N-nobody specific." Lance answered. "It just caught me off guard, is all."

"And it made you lose."

"Give me a break, Pidge. Let's keep this up. We were totally bonding!"

"Lance, don't embarrass yourself. You all ready lost in front of Blue," she said, motioning to his craft. "You want your Lion to think even less of you?"

The Blue Paladin looked up at the seated cerulean behemoth, its golden eyes appeared distant and cold behind the shroud of the barrier. "He doesn't think less of me." Lance grumbled.

"Maybe not, but he might if you go back on what you promised."

"We were playing for bragging rights. Nothing else was on the line"

A fleeting curl of belligerence scraped along the back of Pidge's throat as she was reminded of how low the stakes of the game she had so fretted over were. "Which I'm not going to let you waive any time soon. More importantly, I want you to fork over those gallons of clean, sodium-free, water you promised. You've had your hour – and then some – now I want what I'm owed."

"Yeah, yeah, hang on a minute." Lance stepped forward and brought a hand to the forcefield, disabling it. "Rise and shine, pal. It's time to pay up."

With flawless feline fluidity that offset its inarguably mechanical constitution, the Blue Lion stood up from its seated position and lazily twirled its tail to brush away the sand on its undercarriage, rattling a few unlucky trees in the process.

Amazing, Pidge thought as she always had whenever she saw the Lions in action. Indisputably artificial yet somehow truly alive. Even after all the months, missions, and maintenance checks, that paradox of steel and sentience could still leave her in awe.

"Hey, Pidge. Remember that time you tazed me?"

And with that simple question, awe turned to bewilderment.

"I-nn-when did that ever happen?" she sputtered.

"Back when we first got our gear from Allura."

Bewilderment into unease.

"Um."

"Everyone except Shiro got their Bayards. I poked a little fun at how petite yours was."

Unease into apprehension.

"That was-a lot's happened since-err."

"Then, with a blade that can cut through spaceship hulls, you smacked me in the stomach."

And apprehension into dread.

"Errrr."

"I fell to the floor and convulsed for a little bit? Couldn't feel my toes for the rest of the day? Remember now?"

With each passing emotion, Pidge became fully aware of where she was. A mile away from her Lion and right in front of Lance's own very loyal bestial vessel that he now seemed to have a degree of control over outside of the cockpit. Surely he wouldn't try anything ill-advised though. He was too close and the Lions, while phenomenal in many ways, weren't that precise.

"Vvvvvvvaguely," she slurred.

"Is that right?" Blue towered over the pair. Its alloyed snout hovered above, silent and waiting. "Then maybe this will jog your memory."

That's when Lance paid his dues, forking over the liquid assets he had previously guaranteed, and thereby settled his debt. All at once.

The water did not blast from Blue's mouth as it did fall from it. There was a moment of utmost clarity where Pidge saw what was coming: the bulbous translucent bottom of a loosely bonded pillar. She might have considered leaping away, her agility could have facilitated such an escape. One might think that she didn't because the light blitzing along the surface of the amorphous fluid onslaught distracted her or that Blue's impassive callous visage froze her in place. Rather, she was rooted to the spot by how very, very foolish she felt.

This was immediately superseded by her feeling terribly wet.

The dousing did not pound against her. Its impacts were significant yet they didn't crush. A dip of her head gave her nose and mouth enough cover to breathe. Yet it wasn't a drizzle either or the lapping spray of a garden sprinkler; it was not so easily walked through and ignored. The descending torrent was sustained and persistent as it poured over her, getting under her clothes and drenching them anew. The temperature was lukewarm and the drops that made it past her lips informed her tongue that it tasted as pure as advertised, exempt from salt and acidity save for what it was washing off of her body. These clear curtains of moisture would have made for an enjoyable and rejuvenating shower if they hadn't come from a tremendous maw like runny sheets of spittle. Then there was the culprit responsible for it. She could hear a muffled lilt ricochet off of the cascades echoes and it caused her to think of sloshing buckets set atop the lips of doors and turgid balloons aimed and flung towards unsuspecting victims.

Then, after a few minutes, it ended. Pidge, wetter than ever, was fuming. Lance, equally as wet, opted to stretch.

"Refreshing, wasn't it?" he asked, combing back his soggy bangs with his fingers.

"That...that was the most-!" she paused, catching sight of several small domes sliding along her left wrist. "Bubbles? Why are there-Is that-wh-why do I smell like lavender?"

"It's an Altean bath spice that smells a lot like it." Lance explained. "Put some of it in Blue to help expedite the cleansing."

"Allura's going to kill you for stealing her toiletries." Pidge declared, eager malice radiating from every word.

"Got it from Coran actually." Lance corrected. "In gratitude for my part in making sure he wasn't exploded. Try it sometime."

"I'll show you 'gratitude,' you insufferable, two-faced-."

"Hold that thought, Pidge. Because here comes the rinse!"

"The rinse?"

Blue released a second deluge, almost identical to the first in strength and amount. What set it apart from its predecessor was that it was of a less viscous quality and at the end of it, the shock of the incident had passed, leaving fury as the sole occupant of Pidge's newly soap-free body.

"Forget Allura, the Galra, and Zarkon!" she yelled, stomping towards her teammate. "If anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me!"

Lance did not budge. "Jeez. At least wait for Blue to dry us off before you try," he said as he emptied out his helmet and her shoes.

"Dry us o-?!"

A low whirring filled the air, the rumble of guttural ignition, the deep gulp of the answer that would be raining upon them.

Pidge didn't need to look up.

"Quiznak," she managed to curse before they were completely engulfed in a powerful, frigid gale.

Lance closed his eyes, revelling in the buffet of coolness Blue was blowing towards them. The discovery of his Lion's filter brought an end to his thirst problem as well as all his troubling hygienic concerns, but it didn't give him much in the way of drying himself. He had tried using his clothes for a while, but that just felt wrong and it left him with nothing to wear apart from his armour. Being chiefly aquatic creatures, the Metchazoas had never had to bother creating towels and he didn't have the technological know-how to help them make any. A day after defeating the Defilon, inspiration struck him again, much more lucidly than it had before. He didn't have towels, had no idea how to make them, but he did have a Lion that could make things colder, and things got uncomfortably dry when it got colder.

A lot of trial and error went into this theory, getting Blue to fire its ice beam without actually freezing anything with it was hard enough, and then teaching him to fire it at all when he was out of the cockpit was even more difficult, but he had managed. Then it was all about getting the temperature and wind speed down, the misfires of which still made his neck ache and his spine tingle if he thought about them too hard. After many attempts, he got them both to reasonable levels that would shear the moisture off of him without blowing him off his feet and thus the universe's first Voltron-branded blowdryer was born. Shortly followed by the invention of Hilm's first raft and anchor for him to latch himself onto when he used it on the planet's surface. He was smart enough to make those

The wind was still chilly, but it wasn't stasis pod or open airlock chilly. It reminded him of biking downhill on hot elementary school days and the wind that pushed away the heat and sweat from his skin as it resisted his advance; of hiking on mountains where the breeze got cooler and stronger the closer you got to the sun; of that euphoric thrill he'd get when it was too humid and his family's ancient yet indomitable oscillating fan would finally turn in his direction.

The wintry squall was harmless, but harrowing if you didn't know it was coming. And Pidge hadn't known, and she'd probably talk his ear off about it when she had the chance, but that's what made it funny. He'd hand over some actual jugs of water for her to bathe normally with for the rest of the trip and they'd be square. No harm done and they'd have something to laugh about it later. Well, he would at least.

When half-a-minute had passed, the optimum period for drying both yourself and the clothes on your back in his experience, the blustery volley died down.

"Much better!" he exclaimed.

Even before opening his eyes, Lance delighted in how liberated he now felt from the ocean's stickiness. The beach was fun, but it could get a little clingy for his taste. He bade his Lion to lower its head and open its mouth, flinging his helmet – which he had gotten sick of carrying – and Pidge's shoes - which were now spotless and ready to wear – so she could put them back on in there without getting them dirty again.

To his further satisfaction, Pidge had stood her ground instead of getting blown away like he had feared. She was stock-still, hands still raised to strangle, glasses miraculously still on her face.

"Looking good there, buddy." And a little stunned, he thought. "And hey, your hair's back to its usual puffy sel-."

Pidge hit the beach with a grainy thud, arms clutching themselves, sand spraying with the impact and her own rabid shivering.

"Pidge?!" Lance cried out. He rushed to where she fell, pressing his fingers on her exposed neck and forehead. Cold. Like his were. Or were they colder? Pidge was smaller than him. Probably weighed less, though he had never asked. And if it was enough to make her collapse then Blue's blast must have been too much for her. Now she had, what was it? Hypotism? Hypoglyco? It didn't matter. He needed to raise her body temperature before she went into shock.

"Hang on. Just-just hang on, okay?" He dashed towards the rocks he had laid his clothes on and grabbed his grey top then practically dove back to his fallen companion.

Lance yanked her up this chest; rubbing his shirt under her own to generate heat, pressing her close to transfer some of the his body temperature, and keeping her vertical so that the Joitn sun could beam down on her unopposed; doing everything he could to get warmth back into Pidge's trembling form.

Throughout his ministrations, he apologized, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," he made promises, "You're going to be okay. This ain't so bad. It's going to be okay," and he begged, "Please, please, please be okay," with such rapidity that it began to melt into forlorn gibberish that was so immense it could have constituted the foundations of a whole new tongue of atonement.

Somewhere amidst all the pleading and rubbing, Lance could no longer hear Pidge's teeth chatter or feel her body shake. He sensed her legs gaining purchase on the sand and her form growing taut. When he felt she was strong enough, he stepped back, detaching himself, but keeping his hands on the side of her shoulders in case her posture wavered.

"Can you stand on your own?" she stared at him, eyes wide with shock or resentment or both. Lance didn't know, didn't want to imagine, but he was pleased to see her nod in acknowledgment. "Good. Good," he said, letting go of her at last. "Look, Pidge. That wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, it was, but I thought it would be funny if...I thought you could handle...I just...this...I wanted us both to have fun and-." Lance stammered, trying to make her understand that he didn't mean any harm, that he had meant well, but it only sounded like a spate of wimpy excuses and he understood that's exactly what it was. He had taken something good, been given a wonderful opportunity to relax and grow closer with a friend, and in his enthusiasm to get even more out of it, had soured the entire affair.

He had screwed up once again

"I'll make it up to you, okay. Somehow, someday, I will. I promise," Lance said, half-hearted and hopeful in his ability to do so. He stepped back, effortlessly climbing into his Lion's mouth without taking his eyes off of Pidge – for fear of her falling, for fear of her leaving – before reaching a hand down towards her. It wasn't a difficult climb, certainly not for her, but this small gesture was as good a place to begin as any. "Here. Let me give you a ride back to Green for starters."

Pidge hesitated.

Pidge didn't hesitate often.

The last time she had done so happened a full minute ago while she had been pretending to freeze.

A fitting ploy, or so she thought in the midst of Lance's mildly frosty monsoon. When it ended, she would let herself flop to the ground where she would showcase all the symptoms of hypothermia. She had been rash, as she often was, but logical. The deception would be the perfect payback to what Lance was doing to her with his Lion as well as a purposeful but painless punishment for his fraudulent drowning routine from not too long ago.

She would fake perishing from the sudden cold for 10 seconds and then she'd leap back to her feet to show that tall twit how badly he'd been fooled and how awfully he had fooled her earlier; giving him enough time to freak out over her condition while depriving him of the opportunity to study her more thoroughly.

10 seconds. 10. She had been counting.

She hadn't counted on him scrambling towards the rocks, grabbing that shirt, and then scooping her into his arms in 7.

She hadn't counted on him pressing her to his bare chest, the sight of which she had grown indifferent towards after months of being his flatmate on Earth and in space. That same apathy left her ill-prepared for the feel of it, for her cheeks meeting his pectorals, for that firmness that disproved her conceit that Lance was a creature of straw, flesh, and hot air. His strokes on her exposed and concealed skin were altruistic and devoid of lechery, but she considered them invasive all the same. She was on the verge of scrambling her hands from her sides to push him away so she could chastise him for it when the boy began to speak.

Words were said by him and ignored by her; they were unremarkable in sequence and content. What took her by surprise was how they were said. That tone of his, frantic and soothing at the same time; ripe with urgency and remorse. A timbre of regret and alarm that enhanced his generic appeals with a selfless undercurrent: he could live with her never forgiving him for this, so long as she was okay, so long as she came out unharmed, he could endure that because she deserved to be all right. Cue hesitation.

If she had been in any real danger, that tone alone might have made her feel safe.

Instead, it made her feel safer; secure enough to grow careless with her charade and cease the affectations of a lost Arctic soul. When Lance released her because of this, she was almost sad to see him go in spite of the pithy distance that separated them.

Now here he was, reaching out his hand for her to take, looking at her with those dark blue eyes of his bursting with shame and kindness.

Without thinking, she took it, and as she did, she felt a tinge of friction from where their fingers brushed against one another. The friction ran up her arm, traced a hazy trail across the breadth of her shoulders, dipped down along the top buttons of her spine, tickled through layers of bone and muscle, then nestled into her chest where it hovered comfortable over a quartet of very essential chambers in a lazy orbit, losing power and intensity with each subsequent revolution while maintaining a serene prominence.

That was when Pidge realized that she was in deep, deep trouble.

 **The End**

Author Note:

Yikes. I know I said this would be shorter than Washouts and Weedkillers and that it would be finished in a couple of weeks, but once again, the story kind of got away from me.

A brief history of what this started out as and what I originally intended for it to be: the Alphabet game near the end of story was the first thing I wrote and Pidge and Lance's answers, the sequence of who would go first, and how it would end were sketched out while I was still writing the first Ventures in Viridian tale. Ergo my confidence that everything would fall into place the moment I began. I had my central gimmick, I kind of had an ending, all I needed to do was come up with a decent beginning and bridge it with the rest and I'd be golden.

Except given how I had chosen to link it with the previous fic, I now needed an explanation as to why Lance and Pidge were taking it easy on a beach planet when the rest of the gang might have been in danger. That's where the hydro coercion came in. Pidge had to choose between giving Lance an hour of leisure or being smelly for the rest of the series. Again, I thought I was set, I thought it was enough; the story would begin with Pidge giving exposition on why they were in the Joitn sector, she'd fetch Lance, then she'd tell him about how she got in contact with the Castle, and that would somehow lead into the game with all plot holes filled. To my dismay, I got it into my head that it would be a lot more interesting to show both Pidge getting in contact with Allura as well as the moment Lance turned the tables on her. The former then grew to incorporate some Coran and the latter needed its own explanation as to how Lance got her to stop her Lion in the Joitn sector; the part with the tail was dangerous, unexpected, and darkly funny in how it could have gotten them both killed or one of their Lions maimed. It was perfect.

But wouldn't you know it, that still wasn't enough for me. I had all these other ideas going off in my noggin. Conversations I wanted them to have, anecdotes from their pasts I wanted to drop in, all of which wouldn't be able to stand on their own or as components to a different story (ex. Lance's dropkick, Shiro possibly not taking the news that his Lion used to belong to Zarkon who still has considerable power over it, etc.). Absurd things, rude things, serious things. Topics the two of them could have gabbed about in the show that would be difficult to incorporate without compromising Legendary Defender's breakneck pacing. Stuff about the past worthy of comment.

Like how the Paladins probably would have never become the Paladins if not for the Blue Lion.

To get there, I'd need to ramp up the tension, but with a little set-up with Allura thanking Pidge for saving her and Lance's awfully insensitive drowning gag that almost gave this story the title, "Caramel Float," I was able to put the Green genius in the right mood and mindset to get all worried and introspective about the luckier breaks in their war against the Galra. Lance doing what he could to pull her out of that funk and the pair waxing over the fight with Sendak finally enabled me to get to that coveted ABC nonsense. Eventually. And even then, I just had to throw in one last revenge prank to bring all that simmering emotional and physical appreciation they were gaining for one another to a nebulous boil of shipping. That'll pay off in the next story, which ought to be much simpler to write now that I've laid the groundwork with this and "Washouts and Weed Killers," but who knows? Inspiration might strike me mercilessly once more. Hopefully, I'll have that done before Season 2 hits.

However, despite all that was added and changed, the original spirit of the story endured. That deceitfully simple premise of Pidge and Lance growing closer, going from talking over the radio to walking side by side and learning more about each other as they shared hopes, fears, conceits, and barbs.

And let me acknowledge that, yes, this is a beach fic. I just hope that all the blackmail, fake drowning, fake freezing, and robot lion misuse is enough to set it apart from the usual suspects while still giving you everything you love about those stories including half-naked protagonists and characters getting physically and metaphorically wet because of one another.

Believe it or not, I actually had to cut out some content while I was writing this. No joke. That is, there could have been a joke about Dragon Voltron where Lance tries to convince Pidge that Dragons would be cooler and more useful robot animals to ride around in because their wings would let them fl…and their fire breath would let them shoot lasers out of their…you get the idea. He'd then go on to say "Eggs" while Pidge prodded him for more of the unique benefits dragon-themed robots would grant them. On the plus side, it forced me to build up the Dinosaur Voltron joke a bit more. That's how you got the tail innuendo exchange. For better or worse.

Anyway, that's all I got to say about that.

As always, feel free to leave me a review to let me know what you thought of the story.

Until next time!


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